Travel for Life: Is Pfizer's Vaccine Announcement the Beginning of the End of the Pandemic?

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Is Pfizer's Vaccine Announcement the Beginning of the End of the Pandemic?

The news of a vaccine that is 90% effective against Covid 19 has sparked widespread hope across the world. This historical news broke on November 9th in New York, where Pfizer is based. The vaccine has been developed in partnership with German company BioNTech. The EU Commission confirmed it will sign contract with Pfizer & Biontech soon for up to 300 million doses. In the below video, France 24 examine the claims with their panel and ask if this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic.

Significant Challenges Ahead

With demand likely to far outweigh potential production capacity, the mass production and distribution of a vaccine will raise significant challenges. For example,

Global distribution will face a bottleneck

Because there are only four-to-six facilities in the world that can reliably mass produce vaccines.

Any rapid scale-up of global production will require technology transfer

Which will involve the challenge of protecting intellectual property rights.

Temperature-controlled distribution

Given the need for some vaccines to be kept within a certain temperature so they don’t lose their potency or efficiency.
Vaccines must be transported internationally and locally through a series of temperature-controlled steps called the “cold chain."

Storage and Distribution Issues

The issue is acute for a new type of vaccine that uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to trigger an immune response. To prevent degradation, the vaccine needs to be stored and distributed at very cold temperatures, making it hard to administer jabs in conventional settings such as pharmacies. Wealthy countries at the front of the queue for jabs are best placed to deal with storage challenges

Here are the temperatures required for storage and distribution:

AstraZeneca (andenovirus technology)

Normal fridge temperatures

Moderna (mRNA)

-20°C

Novavax (recombinant protein vaccine)

Normal fridge temperatures

Pfizer and BioNTecwhich (Andenovirus Technology)

-70°C
Pfizer said its temperature-controlled shipping containers solve some concerns. Once removed from the containers, the vaccine can be kept for up to a day at a temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius (36-46°F) — roughly the temperature of a normal refrigerator — or 2 hours at room temperature.

Sanofi (recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Protein Antigen + AS03 Adjuvant)

Normal fridge temperatures

Yet even normal fridge temperatures can be tricky. The World Health Organization says half of all vaccines are wasted due to refrigeration failure. One Covid-19 vaccine candidate — made by US biotech Inovio — can be kept at room temperature, though doubts about its chances have sent shares down two-thirds since June.

What's Next?

After Pfizer's announcement on 11/09/2020, it had brought a big burst of optimism to the world. But public health officials have urged caution, pointing out that it remains to be seen how different age groups or risk categories will react to the vaccine, or indeed if those immunised will still be capable of passing on the disease (or infection prevention).

However, given the urgent need to arrest the pandemic, timing will trump convenience at first. But vaccines that are easier to handle could win out in the end.

References

Moderna said the immune responses in those aged between ages 56 and 70, above age 70 and those 18 to 55-years-old were similar
Moderna has never brought a vaccine to market before

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