Vaccine visionaries: Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna

By Nori Quist, Staff Writer

Amidst the most recent spike, news was released that COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer as well as BioNTech and Moderna are 95% effective. Pfizer’s first shipment of vaccines will be delivered on December 15 and Pfizer and Moderna are both awaiting FDA approval, with FDA discussions about the vaccines taking place on December 10 and December 17 respectively. This means that, as projected, Pfizer’s first shipment of vaccines will most likely be distributed to highly at-risk groups in mid-December. 

Pfizer expects to produce around 50 million vaccines globally during 2020, and the allotment of those doses will prioritize people in high-risk situations, like hospital workers and senior citizens in crowded nursing homes. As teenagers, Samo students are not at the top of the vaccination list, which means the vaccine rollout in mid-December is not going to immediately affect its students directly. However, vaccine distribution is a crucial step towards schools reopening—teachers are expected to be prioritized for vaccination before some of the rest of the general public, and the vaccine itself has been developed much faster than vaccines in years past.   

Typically, it can take 10 years to get a vaccine from preliminary analysis to mass distribution. The fact that Pfizer and Moderna might be able to start distributing their vaccine in mid-December, less than a year after the gene sequence for COVID-19 was released, is an acceleration from previous patterns in vaccine production.

Art by Ella Rose

The reason behind the relative haste of COVID-19 vaccine development is that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines contain mRNA as opposed to the traditional viral proteins. This means that the vaccine does not have to go through some of the usual stages of production. Most flu vaccines are manufactured using viruses grown in eggs or in cell cultures, but mRNA vaccines can be made off of a DNA template. Additionally, since there is not any virus in the vaccine, there is no risk of actually getting sick with COVID-19 from being vaccinated.

With the upcoming FDA discussions about Pfizer’s vaccine on Dec. 10, and about Moderna and BioNTech’s vaccines on Dec. 17, things are moving forward towards a return to semi-normalcy. 

 “I understand the uncertainty and fear that many feel about the new [COVID-19] vaccines, especially since they are a new and rapidly developed vaccine, but I feel very optimistic about the outlook and the data so far,” Samo science teacher Kate Song said.

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