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The European Medicines Agency (EMA), which examines applications for authorization from three applicants, said on Monday it could approve the first vaccines against Covid-19 by the end of the year or early 2021. Oxford / AstraZeneca, Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna are the three projects subject to this review.
The expectation for the approval and planned implementation of vaccines has been linked to two words: efficacy and efficacy. But, while the results of the first three are very promising, each has its advantages and disadvantages.
British laboratory AstraZeneca, associated with the University of Oxford, announced Monday that it has developed a vaccine that is 70% effective on average, or up to 90% in some cases, according to interim results.
Russia announced today that its Sputnik V vaccine against covid-19, developed by the Gamaleya National Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, is 95% effective, according to preliminary results. The results were obtained on volunteers, 42 days after the injection of the first dose. It is advertised as the cheapest.
These results seem, for the moment, less convincing than those of its competitors Pfizer / BioNTech or Moderna, whose effectiveness exceeds 90 percent, but the British formula has the advantage of using more traditional technology, making its future vaccine less expensive and easier to store.
On Monday the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca announced an efficacy of up to 90%, based on analyzes of 2,700 people who first received half a dose and, after a month, were injected with a full dose. But the results revealed that when given two full doses, the efficacy, paradoxically, is only 62 percent.
The experimental vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech was the first to show results in terms of efficacy – reaching 95 percent – thanks to a study of approximately 44,000 participants and 170 infected among them (only eight of those infected people received two doses of the true vaccine). Clinical studies have found 95% efficacy to be consistent across different age groups and across all genders.
As for the North American vaccine from Moderna and the National Institute of Health, it was announced that it was 94.5 percent effective, according to an initial analysis of a study with 30,000 people in the United States, although the results are still scarce. preliminary.
Vaccines accessible to all?
The effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is similar, which may be one of the advantages. But effectiveness is not only relevant when the goal is to try to protect and immunize the entire population as possible and to have a vaccine accessible to all. And for this, in addition to effectiveness, price is one of the relevant factors for distributing the drug to more people.
And the price differences between the three vaccines are huge.
The project developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca will cost around three euros per dose. The American multinational Pfizer and the German biotechnology company BioNTech, on the other hand, can exceed 15 euros per dose, or five times more.
As for the vaccine from North American Moderna and the US National Institutes of Health, the price can be seven times that of AstraZeneca, reaching 21 euros per dose. The point is that each person is expected to be inoculated with two doses, which increases the vaccination costs for each person to double.
What are the differences between effectiveness and functioning?
The vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna show some similarities with respect to the technology used and how the inoculum works.
Both vaccines use the same type of technology based on ribonucleic acid (messenger RNA), which produces the key protein to fight Sars-Cov-2. Even if these are “technologies that until now were not used in vaccines”, as explained by the virologist of the National Biotechnology Center (CNB-CSIC), Isabel Sola, quoted by Efe.
As for the dosage, the two vaccines against Covid-19 require the application of two doses with an interval of 28 days from each other.
At this point It should be noted, however, that Moderna’s vaccine is made up of 100 micrograms of RNA per dose, whereas Pfizer’s only comprises 30 micrograms.
Therefore, both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use a technique that encodes an RNA molecule that is encapsulated in a lipid membrane so that it can enter cells. AstraZeneca’s experimental vaccine uses deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) technology, with inactivated adenovirus genes.
As for the dosage, two doses are expected to be injected, but researchers are still evaluating the amounts of each.
The storage temperature can be a relevant factor
The transport and the conditions of storage and storage of medicines are very important factors when making a vaccine against Covid-19 accessible to all. By the way, one of the decisive criteria in the choice of vaccines by several nations will be the conditions necessary for their conservation, since they require different treatments, techniques and equipment, which are often in short supply in hospitals or laboratories.
The novelty of the AstraZeneca vaccine is that, according to the researchers, it is stored in the refrigerator at temperatures between two and eight degrees for a period of six months, making it easy to transport, distribute and store anywhere in the world.
Although Pfizer has to be at very low temperatures and thus becomes less accessible or logistically easy to use, the pharmaceutical company intends to use containers designed with dry ice to ensure that the vaccine is stored for approximately 15 days.
But there is still another criterion that distinguishes these first three vaccines: production capacity.
Pfizer and BioNTech have guaranteed a production of 50 million doses by the end of the year and 1.3 billion by 2021. For its part, Moderna has defined the advance for this year of 20 million doses and between 500 and 1 billion until 2021.
And AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford ensure they are making rapid progress in manufacturing, with a capacity of up to three billion vaccine doses in 2021, on an ongoing basis, pending regulatory approval.
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