Vaccine Updates!
- fionacsweet
- Nov 30, 2020
- 2 min read
Moderna just announced the final results of their 30,000 person efficacy trial in a press release. They found that only 11 people who received two doses of the vaccine developed COVID-19 symptoms after being infected with the virus versus 185 symptomatic cases in a placebo group. That is an efficacy of 94.1%
Moderna's candidate also has 100% efficacy against severe disease. There were 0 severe COVID-19 cases in those vaccinated versus 30 severe cases in a placebo group. The company is now planning on filing a request for emergency use authorization for its vaccine with the FDA and the European Medicines Agency.
Pfizer continues to report excellent results for its vaccine, with an efficacy of 95%, in the final analysis of their 45,000 person trial. In their study, which ended after 170 cases of COVID-19 were identified, only 10 severe ones occurred, and only one was in the vaccinated group.
Moderna and Pfizer both say their vaccines worked to about the same degree for all participants regardless of gender, ethnicity, or age. Moderna hopes to provide the US government with 20 million doses by the end of the year and Pfizer says it should have 50 million doses to split between the US and other countries that they have made agreements with.
At Gavin Newsom's COVID-19 press conference today, he stated that "We are expecting 327,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine in the next few weeks. That’s California’s portion of the first wave of the vaccine." He also said that detailed plans for this distribution will be out this week.
I am personally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I know that cases are really bad right now in all parts of the United States, but soon we will have a vaccine. Keep in mind that this does not mean that we can relax now. We should actually do the opposite of that in order to keep case counts down. If we continue at the rate we are going right now, all of our hospitals will become extremely overwhelmed by the end of the holiday season and then severely ill patients will not be able to receive the help they need.
In other news, today was the first day back at school from Thanksgiving Break and I feel very overwhelmed. I feel like finals week in the middle of a pandemic is just not the move.
Have a great week!
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