COVID-19 vaccine update: 4 candidate vaccines show promising results
Will the world soon have a COVID-19 vaccine? This seems very likely as things start looking up in the race to develop a vaccine against the Coronavirus Disease. Four candidate vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Russia's Sputnik V have all reportedly produced promising results.
Find out how effective the four candidate COVID-19 vaccines are / Source: Pexels
Below is an update on each of the four candidate COVID-19 vaccines. Read on to find out more about the efficacy of each of them.
Pfizer & BioNTech
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and their German biotech company partner BioNTech have announced the conclusion of the Phase 3 study of their COVID-19 vaccine.
In a press release, they reported that the study has reached 170 confirmed COVID-19 cases and that the vaccine candidate BNT162b2 demonstrated 95% efficacy beginning 28 days after the first dose.
Moreover, no serious safety concerns related to the vaccine candidate have been reported so far.
Moderna
U.S.-based biotech firm Moderna also reported that their candidate vaccine mRNA-1273 is nearly 95% effective.
Moderna's trial involved 300,000 people in the U.S. Half of them were given two doses of their candidate vaccine, four weeks apart; and half of them were given dummy treatment.
Based on an analysis of the first 95 people to develop COVID-19 symptoms, only five of them were given the vaccine and 90 of them received the placebo.
Moreover, only 11 of them suffered from severe COVID and none of them were injected with the candidate vaccine.
Moderna and Pfizer both used messenger RNA (mRNA) technology to develop their vaccines. This process uses a small sequence of genetic code or mRNA to induce an immune response in the body. This approach is entirely different from the classic method in developing vaccines that uses the actual pathogen or parts of it to trigger the immune system to fight off the virus.
Russia's Sputnik V
Russia also announced early encouraging results for their COVID-19 vaccine, the Sputnik V, which was developed by the Gamaleya Institute.
They claimed that their adenovirus-based candidate vaccine is 92% effective, after researchers have identified 20 COVID-19 cases among more than 16,000 Phase 3 trial participants.
Although that is positive news, the Phase 3 of their vaccine trial still has six more months to go, so some critics say that their analysis is still far from conclusive.
AstraZeneca
Biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, who's working hand-in-hand with Oxford University, has also published auspicious results for Phase 2 of their COVID-19 vaccine trials, especially for the elders, who belong to the most vulnerable group.
Based on their study involving 560 healthy adults, including 240 participants who were 70 years old or older, their candidate vaccine called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 reportedly produced a T-cell response within 14 days of the initial dose and an antibody response within 28 days of the second dose.
Researchers believe that T-cell responses will be crucial in developing long-term immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.
Phase 3 of their study is still ongoing, but they are optimistic that they will have the data by Christmas.
In line with these positive updates on candidate COVID-19 vaccines, President Rodrigo Duterte has reportedly approved the allocation of budget for advance payment, so the country can secure a supply of the COVID-19 vaccine once it gets approved for use.
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