The New York Times, December 5, 2020
Across the world, mass vaccination campaigns are beginning, or just about to.
Russia began its campaign on Saturday. Britain will start its campaign on Tuesday. The United States hopes to start large-scale vaccinations this month, as does Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been vaccinated in China, and thousands in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.
But the mass vaccination efforts differ in one profound way: Some rely on a vaccine that has completed human trials — and some do not.
The vaccines that have, like the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine approved in Britain and expected to be approved shortly in the United States, have more evidence of efficacy and safety. Those that have not — the Russian and Chinese vaccines — carry uncertainties that vaccine experts say should be settled before being given to millions of healthy people.
For one thing, researchers want to be assured that if people get Covid-19, despite having been vaccinated, they develop a milder form of the disease rather than an enhanced one.
The race for a coronavirus vaccine has been a global undertaking from the start. When Chinese scientists shared the genome of the virus on Jan. 10, researchers around the world leapt to begin designing vaccines.
In March, the first clinical trials of coronavirus vaccines in humans were launched by Moderna in the United States and Sinovac in China. More vaccine makers joined the effort, including in India, Thailand and Cuba. Today there are 13 vaccines in final, Phase 3 human trials and a total of 58 vaccines being tested on people. Dozens more are in preclinical tests.
The vaccines vary in how they prompt the body’s immune response. Moderna and Pfizer use a relatively new technology, creating genetic molecules encased in oily bubbles. The Sputnik vaccine uses adenoviruses to shuttle in genes. China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines contain dead coronaviruses.
No one has ever created a licensed human vaccine for any coronavirus before, and the world has been eagerly waiting to see what works best and most safely. Vaccine skepticism exists in countries like the United States and Brazil anyway, and Covid vaccines are open to much more, given the speed of their development and the nationalistic rivalries involved.
As governments around the world jockeyed to place advance orders, without knowing which vaccine — if any — would turn out to work, global health experts began warning that vaccine nationalism would undermine the worldwide fight against a virus that respects no borders.
The United States used its Operation Warp Speed program to make purchases from six vaccine makers. Russia and China have promoted their vaccines to a number of developing countries, using them as a medical form of soft diplomacy.
Last month, the first results of Phase 3 clinical trials for four vaccines came to light, showing high efficacy rates for Sputnik V and the vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca. The news was heartening. But researchers are still waiting in most cases for something more than company news releases to dig their teeth into.
Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with permission.