With over 100 vaccines being developed and tested to stop the spread of COVID-19, it seems that nations worldwide are finally getting vaccine supplies to tackle the ongoing pandemic. As per the latest news, around 40 million vaccines cloud be heading to the United Kingdom in the next two and half months, after Pfizer Inc. announced that it had commenced the manufacturing process.
Sources cite that Pfizer, which has produced thousands of doses at its Belgian production facility, is dedicated to delivering 100 million doses in 2020, of which 40% are earmarked the Britain government. This two-dose vaccine may enable 20 million British patients to be inoculated before 2021.
However, rolling out such a vaccine to people is subject to regulatory approval. The logistics of getting ample doses to the front line also poise a major challenge.
Speaking on which, Ben Osborn, the Boss at Pfizer said that even though the vaccine is in clinical trials and is subject to regulatory approval, the company is already producing the vaccine at risk and scale. His comment comes amid growing optimism that Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate could become available in the United Kingdom before Christmas.
Conventional vaccines work by injecting a weakened or deactivated form of a pathogen into a human body in order to train it to identify and defeat the active virus in a body. However, both the Pfizer and Oxford vaccines seek to introduce into the body a genetic sequence that encourages human cells to churn out parts of coronavirus, so the body can adapt to deal with it that way.
Meanwhile, Prof. Jonathan Van Tam, the deputy CMO of England commented that AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine could be ready for a mass roll-out as early as December.
Source Credit - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/18/uk-could-get-coronavirus-shots-new-year-pharma-giant-pfizer/