COVID-19 VACCINE: QUESTIONS ON EVERYONE’S MIND

A s of December 2020, worldwide around 57 vaccine trials are underway, with 17 trials in Phase 2 or 3. No vaccine trial has so far successfully completed a Phase 3 trial, although, several vaccines in Phase 3 have been approved for emergency use in various countries.

Let us break down testing terminology for you before we understand which vaccines are currently on their way to being approved? Phase 1 of testing usually marks the first time the vaccine is being tested in a very small group of adults (20-80 people), while in Phase 2 the study is expanded and given to people with characteristics similar to those for whom the vaccine is intended. In Phase 3, the vaccine is given out to thousands of people to test for its safety. Following Phase 3 (at times many go through Phase IV formal) a vaccine is approved and licensed by the respective issuing authority in the country.

As of now, five major vaccine trials being undertaken by Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and the University of Oxford (along with AstraZeneca) and the Gamaleya Institute have announced positive results from their ongoing Phase 3 trials. At the same time, the Pfizer vaccine has already been approved for emergency use in the United Kingdom, United States, Bahrain, UAE and Canada.

Pfizer and Moderna have both announced that they are attempting to maximise the availability of Covid-19 vaccines, and will produce around 50 and 20 million doses in 2020 respectively. In 2021, Pfizer is estimating that it will produce 1.3 billion doses and Moderna will produce between 500 million 1 billion doses. The current form of vaccination against Covid-19 is a set of two injections or doses administered a number of weeks apart.