Moving beyond Covid-19 means having faith in the approved vaccines
- The haste to develop vaccines has made some people nervous about safety. But no pharmaceutical company would put its reputation and business at risk by prematurely releasing a vaccine without being confident in its safety or claimed efficacy rates
The new year has begun with a surge of positive information about Covid-19 vaccines. From China to Europe to the United States, companies and governments are announcing immunisation programmes or releasing trial results. These are hopeful times in efforts to bring the pandemic to heel and give a sense that the worst is behind and life will be soon as before.
There is every reason to be optimistic, but we also have to be realistic; until infection numbers have been brought under control and there is certainty the disease has stopped spreading, protective measures cannot be lowered.
Vaccines have been rushed through the development, testing and regulatory processes at an unprecedented rate. The usual requirements that mean drugs take 10 or 15 years to go from the laboratory to clinic have been relaxed in the name of stopping the disease from claiming lives every second, infecting hundreds of thousands more each day and saving businesses and jobs. The haste has made some people nervous about safety.
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Slowing the spread of Covid-19 depends on factors including efficacy of the vaccine, global access to doses and whether people are willing to be immunised.
A survey by the World Economic Forum and market research firm IPSOS in the wake of vaccines being rolled out by the Chinese company Sinopharm in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and the American and German partnership Pfizer-BioNTech in Western countries reveals worryingly large percentages of some populations not wanting to get a shot. Chinese were the most receptive to the idea among the 15 countries surveyed, with 80 per cent of respondents saying they would take a dose, while the lowest figure was in France, with just 40 per cent.
How many people need a Covid-19 vaccination to halt its spread?
At the heart of the matter is herd immunity, where a population is protected from a disease if enough people are immunised. For Covid-19, scientists believe 70 to 80 per cent will need to be vaccinated. If global business and travel are to resume, vaccination and immunity levels need to be worldwide; without such rates, we cannot confidently open borders to unrestricted movement of people. The leaders of Hong Kong, a city that relies on trade and travel with other countries, are obviously eager for people to receive one of the three vaccines that will be available for free.
No pharmaceutical company would put its reputation and business at risk by prematurely releasing a vaccine without being confident in its safety or claimed efficacy rates. Safety is not being compromised; the urgency has meant governments and firms have set aside indifference, commercial imperatives and bureaucratic red tape. There are still uncertainties, like whether the vaccines stop transmission or how long they will be effective. But moving beyond Covid-19 is ultimately down to immunisation.
