One of world’s oldest medical journals The Lancet on Sunday expected quicker success of COVID-19 vaccine studies unlike experiences about other inoculates as the globe now witnesses a race among drug makers and researchers to come up with a vaccine against the coronavirus.
“What’s happened so far has been nothing short of amazing”, the journal quoted as saying Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute’s chief executive officer (CEO) and vaccinologist Penny Heaton, reports AFP.
She attributed the developments to previous investments in “new vaccine technology platforms” amid expert speculations that instead of being one several vaccines could emerge in a near simultaneous time with Bloomberg news group predicting “more than one horse can win this race”.
“Some of us might end up getting a shot of a more traditional vaccine, which uses parts of an inactivated virus to stimulate immunity. Others might get vaccines based on emerging technologies that use synthetic versions of the virus’s genetic code,” read a Bloomberg analysis.
It predicted that some vaccines could be extremely effective but even a less-effective vaccine might work well enough to provide herd immunity in a wider population while some inoculates would be more appropriate for health care workers, who need protection in soonest possible time.
The Lancet article, however, came as British drugmaker AstraZeneca announced to have doubled manufacturing capacity for its potential Oxford University coronavirus vaccine to 2 billion doses in two deals involving Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates that guarantee early supply to lower income countries.
World Health Organisation (WHO) backed the deals along with epidemic response group CEPI and vaccine alliance GAVI, visibly to quell concerns that the company was committing all initial supplies of the potential vaccine to the developed world.
AstraZeneca earlier also agreed terms with Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines by volume, to supply one billion doses for low and middle-income countries.
The international medical protocol demands the vaccines to be exhaust three phases of trial on human while the AstraZeneca venture with Oxford University currently reached “Phase 2b/3” while US drug maker Moderna and China’s CanSino Biologics now are exhausting the phase 2.
Seven other vaccines against COVID-19 are currently on clinical trials as WHO acknowledges that experiments were underway with over 100 inoculates across the world.
The analyses and developments came as coronavirus continued to expand its clutches with Brazil at the moment appearing as its worst victim with COVID-19 killing one Brazilian in every minute, prompting the Latin American country to allow testing of the Oxford’s experimental vaccine.
