Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Promises on Covid-19 Vaccines

Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD

Vaccines play a vital role in keeping us healthy. Currently, scientists are racing through development at speeds never before seen. Even if the stages of vaccine development could be compressed and supplies could be quickly manufactured, it could take months or longer before people can have access to it.

The World Health Organization closely monitors Covid-19 vaccines which are designed in academic laboratories without having the commercial production capacity. Whereas China has widespread vaccine production capacity and other developing countries including India, Indonesia, and Brazil are amongst the world’s largest vaccine producers and exporters, a sizable amount of the manufacturing capacity belonging to pharmaceutical companies that sell vaccine in North America and Europe is based in the United States.

Assuming a vaccine can be developed rapidly, the production of some vaccine candidates could be easily ramped up than others it is conceivable that they could use the existing plants to produce more vaccines. Production of this type of candidate could reach hundreds of millions of doses within about a year, yet any vaccines would require longer time to reach those output levels.

An RNA vaccine project is being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, began testing four possible vaccines in a compressed Phase ½ trial in the US on May 5, 2020. In addition, Moderna signed a deal with pharmaceutical company Lonzo to produce 1 billion doses of the vaccine in the U.S. and in Switzerland. Nevertheless, of who gets vaccines, it is believed that most new vaccines will require at least two doses to be effective, so any estimates of numbers of doses available in the autumn will need to be divided by two to find out how many people could expect to be vaccinated. The public, both in US and abroad need clear communications about realistic times to COVID-19 vaccine access. Yet when vaccines do start to become available, demand will be enormous and supply will be minimal.

SOURCE

Mounting promises on Covid-19 vaccines are fueling false expectations, experts say

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/covid-19-vaccine-frontrunners-67382

https://www.biospace.com/article/moderna-vaccine-clinical-trial-moves-into-2nd-round-of-dosing/