how will we know if a vaccine is safe?
it won't be long until we have the final results of phase 3 trials for the three front runners.
while promising news, experts say that the early results of pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine should be received with a dose of caution. they point out critical information is missing in the drugmakers’ press release and want to see more data before celebrating.
what’s more, there’s concern around storing and transporting the vaccine as it needs to be kept at freezing cold temperatures — minus 70 degrees celsius (-94 f). typical freezers don’t get that cold, meaning hospitals or health care centres need to buy large, ultra-cold freezers which are costly — $10,000 to $15,000 each.
in a news conference on monday , prime minister justin trudeau acknowledged that there are logistical challenges to distributing the vaccine because of its temperature requirements. an ontario ultra-cold freezers manufacturer is already seeing a spike in inquiries given how niche the product is.
anthony fauci, director of the u.s. national institute of allergy and infectious diseases, also expressed concerns at a conference on wednesday saying that developing countries might have challenges storing the vaccine. there’s already a race in the u.s . for hospitals to obtain super freezers, creating a divide between wealthier urban health centres and rural, poorer ones.
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pfizer and biontech’s vaccine is a mrna vaccine that works by targeting the spike protein on the sars-cov-2 virus . unlike traditional vaccines that use a weakened or “dead” form of a virus or bacteria, mrna vaccines use part of the novel coronavirus’ own genetic code to stimulate an immune response.
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“i think that the results are very promising, but of course, it is still early,” matthew miller , an associate professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences at mcmaster university, tells healthing. “most importantly, the full results of the clinical trial have not yet been published and subjected to the scrutiny of the scientific community.”
another area of uncertainty, as medical outlet stat points out , is that no information was released on whether the vaccine prevents severe cases of covid-19 — those that cause hospitalization or death.
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on monday, trudeau said he hopes a vaccine will be coming to market early next year . “we’re seeing a light at the end of the tunnel,” he said at a news conference.
“we don’t have the infrastructure in place now to store the vaccine but i’m confident it will be in place in january,” a government source, who requested anonymity, told reuters . “we won’t be able to get supplies into every pharmacy, certainly not immediately.”
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dr. tedros adhanom, director-general of the world health organization, tweeted on monday that he welcomes the “encouraging vaccine news” from the drugmakers and salutes scientists and partners around the globe “who are developing new safe, efficacious tools to beat #covid19.”
morris, who is also a professor of medicine at the university of toronto, tweeted that canadians can’t ignore the fact that the covid-19 pandemic is still a huge health threat. cases continue to climb in parts of canada and across the world.
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