With much of the entire world either in lockdown or contemplating an imminent come back to it, it could be forgiven its bated breath since it awaits news updates on any little progress that might have been made towards developing a vaccine for Covid-19. An activity which typically takes a long time seems to own been pared down seriously to a scramble over a matter of months, and some 240 potential vaccines are presently under development in a variety of places across the world, including forty in clinical trials and nine in the last stages of testing.
For governments and their scientific advisors all bearing a tired aura of folks who’ve go out of ideas, a vaccine is without question the ultimate goal in the fight Covid. New restrictions imposed are invariably prefaced with the language “until we have a vaccine “.Of course new vaccines do not at all times work, and so it is required to sound the obligatory note of caution. But assuming a minumum of one does, what, realistically, is the better we can expect as a result?
Are we expecting too much of a vaccine?
Assumptions are frequently made that the vaccine may be the panacea which will ultimately consign the ubiquitous SARS-CoV-2 to history. But are we possibly expecting too much of it, at least in the early stages?
In the field of medicine there is a concept called “sterilising immunity”, wherein a vaccinated individual can expect total protection from the virus. But coronaviruses are rarely that co-operative โควิด. Instead it’s much much more likely that inoculation will provide efficacy at, say, 50%, meaning the vaccine is a huge advance but it won’t make the virus disappear, at least not overnight.
Possibly probably the most advanced of the Covid-19 vaccine projects presently under way is that being manufactured by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. Experiments undertaken in macaques as part of this project revealed that the vaccine protected the primates from developing pneumonia, but quantities of virus remained in the top of airways.
Candidate vaccines a potential game-changer
Notwithstanding their likely imperfect performance the candidate vaccines, if they’re successful even up to a point, promise to become a game-changer. The reason being they both minimise the odds of the recipient becoming infected and also, if infection does occur, they greatly reduce the seriousness of the condition which will develop. Thus it brings benefits on two fronts.
According to Vincent Munster, head of the virus ecology unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’Rocky Mountain Laboratories, who headed the study: “If we push the illness from pneumonia to a standard cold, then I believe that’s a huge step forward.”
Relegating Covid-19 to an unthreatening condition will end the need for restrictions to be imposed to safeguard health services, and pave just how for a return to normal life and a rejuvenated economy.
Phil Andrews is a freelance English-language content writer specialising in articles, web content and blogging. He’s mcdougal of The Best Year Of Our Lives, a historical fiction novel set in 1976 about a group of young adults growing up in a restless West London suburb beside the River Thames.