Coronavirus Vaccine By Pfizer Has 90% Success Rate! But Will India Get This Vaccine By 2021?

Since the news of an interim analysis by Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine candidate reporting to be 90% effective in Covid-19 treatment has broken out, stock records on share markets all around the globe are witnessing massive variations.

However, the better news here is that the vaccine is 90% effective. A string of discussions on Reddit regarding this topic suggest that a vaccine with only 55% efficacy rate would have been acceptable too.

While, medical regulators initially had reported that any vaccine with just as much as 50% effectiveness rate would be approved.

Let’s learn more about this vaccine candidate by Pfizer and BioNTech.

1st Covid Vaccine Trial to Show 90% Effectiveness Rate

After announcing a successful 90% effectiveness in protecting people from transmission of Covid-19 virus in the third phase of Covid-19 vaccine trials, the two pharmaceutical corporations are expecting to start supplying/shipping these vaccines globally, once they are ready with the regulators signing off on the shot.

Regulators have started looking forward to processing an emergency licence application.

Manufacturing is already under way, however, data on the long-term effects of the vaccine could come later this month.

There are so far no safety concerns around the vaccine, with the two companies reporting no serious side-effects.

“Today is a great day for science and humanity. The first set of results from our phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trial provides the initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent Covid-19,” says Dr Albert Bourla, the Pfizer chairman and chief executive.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine makes use of the genetic code of the virus, rather than any part of the virus itself.

The phase 3 trials  involved over 43,000 people. These volunteers were either given the Covid vaccine, administered in two shots about three weeks apart, or a placebo alternative like the meningitis vaccine.

Pfizer Expects to Supply Over 50 Mill Doses in 2020

While vaccine manufacture has already started, Pfizer claims that it expects to supply about 50 million doses in 2020 and nearly 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

Countries shall decide who will get the vaccination doses on priority.

For instance, UK has recommended that shall these vaccines work properly in elderly people, they will be the 1st to receive the doses.

UK has already bought 40m doses, enough for 20 million people, two doses per person. EU too has booked 200 mill doses.

India to Face Problem for Pfizer Vaccine Storage

It must be understood that this vaccine created by Pfizer and BioNTech, requires a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius or -94F to be stored in, and to be transported from one place to another.

Sunil Nair, CEO of Snowman Logistics says that there is not a single firm in India with the capacity to transport at temperatures below -40 degree.

This is a major problem, not just faced by countries like India but also the ones like the US.

“The cold chain is going to be one of the most challenging aspects of delivery of this vaccination”, says a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, US.

“We’re talking about a vaccine that needs storage at minus 70 or 80. That’s a tremendous logistical issue not only in the U.S. but outside the Western world”, says Dr Gregory Poland, a virologist and vaccine researcher with the Mayo Clinic.