Latest Good News on a Covid-19 Vaccine

After long period of fear loneliness and limits on our freedom that we never could have imagined finally some good news the long for vaccine suddenly becoming a tangible reality Pfizer's found to be 90% effective the Oxford AstraZeneca rival expected to report its results within weeks and here in Imperials lab work is progressing on their vaccine. Although it's unlikely to be ready until the middle of next year the developers believe it's important to have lots of Candidates.

Professor Robin Shattock, Head of Imperial College Vaccine Programme, said that One vaccine isn't going to be enough and it's not about a single winner and everybody else is losses. We need as many vaccine candidates as possible for a number of reasons. First of all, we have interim data from the visor vaccine. We don't know how long it will give an immune response. We don't know if it'll be effective in, you know, all different groups the very old very young people with underlying conditions.

So the more candidates We have the better the toolboxes. It's an incredible the complex operation to identify the what do you need the vaccine in those vulnerable populations and get it out to them in a timely fashion. Now at the moment we have one vaccine that we think will come through the Pfizer vaccine that needs a very stringent cold chain. I would not be surprised in the next coming weeks. We'll see a second vaccine even a third More coming through next year.

I think the biggest danger now is that we've got a vaccine that actually people where may now stop taking things seriously because they think it's all over and so we need to remind people that it's not all over until enough people have received a vaccine and that we really know it works.

If we don't get Mass roll out before next summer Logistics and not science are likely to be the reason the Pfrizer Bio nTech vaccine must be stored at minus 70 and you've got to Convince people that it's safe to take the Royal College of GPS recognizes the scale of the challenge chances.

Dr Steve Mowle, Spokesperson Royal College of GP said that GP and the teams already working pretty hard. It's winter we have an enhanced flu vaccination campaign undergoing at the moment. Something will have to give and we will also need help from others such as medical students dentists vets anyone who can be trained to safely give an immunization We will need to use them.

So far the evaluation appears to sound very encouraging as an effective vaccine and sounds safe. But I think we all wait really the full evaluation of these new vaccines without before we can fully assure our patients that these are safe to go ahead with and at the end of the day it does have to pass the among test. 

It does have to pass, but I'll be happy giving this. Vaccine both to myself and to my family and I would want to be able to do that hand on heart to my patients.

Cards on the table when I first started looking into that scenes this week. I was really hoping to tell a positive story about us all getting back to normal, but I have to be guided by what I found and the message seems to be that while there is genuine optimism about finding a successful vaccine. There are a lot of Hoops to jump through on safety and rolling it out at scale is going to be a huge challenge. 

Well that seemed distribution could start before Christmas it feels that a mass rollout is unlikely until well into next year, but after months of unrelentingly bad news the fact that a successful vaccine is now within touching distance feels like a reason for optimism. 

Share this post