Is this IT?

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

 

The world found some hope when Pfizer Inc. said on Monday its “experimental vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 based on initial data from a large study, a major victory in the fight against the pandemic.”

Is this the vaccine that will put an end to this pandemic and restore our lives without the constant fear of being infected by the coronavirus?

Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE are the first drugmakers to show “successful data from a large-scale clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine,” the report said.

Florian Krammer, Professor at the Department of Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA, commented that “These are fantastic results. The efficacy could be higher than expected, and this probably means that – at least in the U.S. – there will be an application for approval very soon. Of course, it would be better to see age-specific data, but I suspect that these will be published soon. Frankly, this is the best news I have received since January 10.”

Indeed it is “the best news” for all who had been made to believe that there is no cure to the disease and plunged the world into a sense of hopelessness. The fear had rendered people to be submissive to whatever the government commanded. We voluntarily surrendered our rights even to protest.

On the other hand, Marylyn Addo, Head of Tropical Medicine Section, University Medical Center Eppendorf (Uke), Hamburg, Germany was reported to have said, “These are interesting first signals, but again they are only communicated in press releases. Primary data are not yet available and a peer-reviewed publication is still pending. We still have to wait for the exact data before we can make a final assessment. At present, there are still few details about the exact data, for example regarding different age groups and in which groups the 94 cases occurred exactly.”

That is also the comment of many people, though hopeful, because until the drug is approved by the authorities and granted license for the treatment of the virus, the Pfizer vaccine remains a “news report.”

The AFP report last November 9 in Paris confirmed the story and cited the claim that “protection in patients was achieved seven days after the second of two doses, and 28 days after the first, according to preliminary findings.”

Last August Pfizer announced that it had entered into “a multi-year agreement with Gilead Services “to manufacture and supply Gilead’s investigational antiviral remdesivir”. Last month Gilead announced that remdesivir was successful and the world immediately accepted this drug. Now Pfizer has presented a new one, and until it has been licensed, the vaccine will remain unavailable.

Will this new drug replace remdesivir as the hope for a cure or another false alarm? We hope not.

However, the company said that “In keeping with guidance from the Food and Drug Administration, the companies will not file for an emergency use authorization to distribute the vaccine until they reach another milestone: when half of the patients in their study have been observed for any safety issues for at least two months following their second dose. Pfizer expects to cross that threshold in the third week of November.”

Till then we wait and but now we see hope amidst our fears.

Based on supply projections, the companies said they expect to supply up to 50 million vaccine doses globally in 2020, and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

Philippine health authorities say that in the event this vaccine receives authorization, the government has already made plans for securing its supply.

Some sectors claim that the vaccine may not come as quickly as we hope. The pandemic has become a political tool and special interest groups have their own “vaccine” and may try to impede the fast approval of the Pfizer drug.

There is dampening news for us. According to a report in Tokyo, “With tropical heat, remote island communities and a dearth of ultra-cold freezers, many Asian countries aren’t betting on Pfizer’s experimental vaccine solving their COVID-19 crisis any time soon.”

The World Health Organization commented that the report is encouraging but was not clearly enthusiastic and the process for its universal news may take some months more.

Anyway, we have some hope for the New Year.