Some protection, even a 50% protection, is better than no protection at all
Highlights
DUBAI: What vaccine efficacy rate would you accept for yourself? The World Health Organisation (WHO), US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and most health regulators agree on this: a 50% efficacy rate for a new vaccine is the "acceptable" threshhold.
Vaccine trial data show various anti-COVID-19 shots with efficacy of well over 50%. Some hits upwards of 70% to 95% in trials. And let's not forget: prior to the current pandemic, the fastest vaccine to be developed (against mumps) still took four years. Our list below shows a number of jabs against SARS-CoV-2 that took less than 12 months.
Massive trials involving tens of thousands of volunteers were done, giving them solid scientific grounding. While COVID-19 is still making a deadly run, today, there are a number of vaccines approved for use in different continents. And inoculations are well underway in different parts of the world, of which the UAE is leading, in terms of rate of distribution. Yet, there's an active anti-vaxx camp, spreading a whole bunch of scare-mongering, unscientific claims, which can be spread exponentially on social media.
EARTH: 7.8 billion inhabitants
There's a huge demand for vaccines for the planet's 7.8 billion inhabitants. So if a vaccine requires two doses, that's a lot of vials that need to be produced, preserved and delivered. Even so, more vaccines may be needed, as some will inevitably spoil during transport or handling.
For now, there's one key question in everyone's mind: What is the best COVID-19 vaccine. What's available now? Fortunately, there are numerous options at humanity's disposal.
The trials posted incredibly high success rates in several places. Moreover, new ways of developing vaccines (such as mRNA) had been found. The utility of tried-and-tested platforms (inactivated/attenuated vaccines) had been re-affirmed. In the UAE, there are currently four approved vaccines: Sinopharm (December 9, 2020), Pfizer-BioNTech (December 23, 2020), Sputnik V vaccine (January 21, 2021), and AstraZeneca (approved in Dubai on February 2, 2021). These are good reasons to celebrate. But celebrations have also changed, as they ought to.
We see today numerous new virus testing technologies, such as RT-LAMP, saliva and DPI tests in Abu Dhabi, antibody therapy in the US and stem cell therapy in the UAE. These may all come in handy in screening for — and fighting — the next pathogen that may threaten humanity. We're not done with coronavirus fight yet. But we've come a long way in winning the battle against the disease.
Following are the profiles of approved vaccines, the leading weapons in humanity's anti-COVID-19 arsenal, as of January 24, 2021:
(Call us out if you see anything amiss in this report, so we can update. Write to readers@gulfnews.com)
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