Written by: Girwan Paudyal - 21107, Grade XII
Posted on: 20 December, 2020
The Corona Virus has taunted and haunted us for too long, and with the world falling into utter confusion and chaos; people are in dire need of some good news. With this, Pfizer is a multinational pharmaceuticals and vaccine-development company mainly based in America. It is a company well known among pharmaceutics to produce reliable and satisfactory cure and vaccines to diseases. Recently, Pfizer and BioNTech, a German pharmaceuticals company, have announced that the coronavirus vaccine that they have developed has passed most of the preliminary stages. But the real question remains- What does this mean and how soon can we get it?
The vaccine that was developed by Pfizer went through a test, in which half of the people are given the actual vaccines and half are given a placebo of salt and water. When the test results came back, it was found that the vaccine was 90% effective. So, we can conclude that the vaccine is probably nearly ready for distribution and works like a charm. Pfizer has also stated that they have done 4 tests in total to determine whether the vaccine has any side-effects and none of the tests have resulted in any severe side-effects. This is some good news, indeed- But what about distribution? Will the public be able to get the vaccine in a fairly short amount of time?
Well, Pfizer has stated that they can make around 30 to 40 million doses of the vaccine. This will be enough for around 15 to 20 million people to receive an initial dose and then a booster dose 3 weeks later. However, the initial doses of the vaccine will not be distributed worldwide. It will probably be limited strictly to the population of America and most of Europe. For us common folk, we are going to have to wait probably another year for the vaccine to be fully accessible to the common public.
Source material: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine
