A US company’s Covid-19 vaccine which it says is nearly 95 percent effective is “about as good as you can get”, says Vaccine Alliance Aotearoa director Professor Graham Le Gros.
Le Gros did dampen some of the excitement by saying adverse reactions from the vaccine aren’t known yet.
Moderna has developed its own Covid-19 vaccine, which it says is nearly 95 percent effective, a week after Pfizer announced the development of its own effective vaccine.
Moderna's president says there are still more hurdles to jump through despite the early results.
“Knowing the vaccine is going to be effective is great news, but we still need to complete the regulatory process, which involves completing the study, generating more data, even some follow up safety data. And then, of course, we need to get busy manufacturing,” Dr Stephen Hoge said.
The company expects to have 20 million doses available in America this year and up to a billion worldwide in 2021.
Le Gros said Moderna’s vaccine version has the “some efficacy or protective profile” but doesn’t need to be stored at such a cold temperature, -70 degrees Celsius, as other versions.
He said the effectiveness rate of nearly 95 per cent was “much better than the flu vaccine”.
“It is actually about as good as you can get,” Le Gros said.
Despite public excitement that the vaccine could end the pandemic there “was a long way to go yet”, Le Gros cautioned.
“We don’t know all the adverse reactions that may occur later, we don’t know if it works on children, that’s a very important demographic,” he said.
“This looks very good for the bulk of the population in adults.”
Le Gros was predicting a quick turnaround for vaccines, with safety checks maybe only being done on certain demographics, adults aged 20 to 60 for example.
“Because people need to get their lives back, because countries need to get going, they will be rolled out slightly prematurely,” he said.
The reason other vaccine versions needed to be stored at such cold temperatures is to keep the proteins that make up the vaccine stable.
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