There are now 175 COVID-19 vaccines in various stages of development, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), of which 33 are now in human trials. Each of the experimental vaccines showed promise in their early stages involving hundreds of people, but the real proving ground, WHO said, is Phase III involving tens of thousands of participants.
This final study must be big enough to show a high degree of certainty that a vaccine will work in the real world. And it must be long enough to see whether serious side effects emerge, WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said.
Any vaccine should be shown to be effective in a least half the people who get it to gain clearance. It is important to follow up the participants in the trials long enough to see whether serious side effects emerge.
The WHO may have issued this reminder in the face of reports that some countries are rushing the process of testing their vaccines to be able to claim the honor of being the first to develop an effective vaccine for COVID-19.
Early last August, Russia came forward with a vaccine it called “Sputnik V” which, it said, it would start administering to its teachers and health workers in October, even if it had not yet undergone Phase III tests. The United Kingdom, the United States, China, and Germany have vaccines now undergoing Phase III trials, but these final tests are expected to be completed only by December.
Unexpectedly, last Thursday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it had sent letters to governors of all 50 American states to prepare for a COVID-19 vaccine to be ready for distribution by November 1. The federal agency asked the governors to expedite approval of applications to distribute the vaccine in state and local health departments and hospitals.
The date of the projected distribution of the vaccine – November 1 – immediately raised concerns that the federal order was a political move of the Trump administration. November 1 is two days before the US presidential election on November 3, Tuesday. A massive distribution of the vaccine was evidently planned to show that the administration was acting on the COVID-19 pandemic which has infected and killed more Americans than any other nation in the world.
There may be political motives for the moves and claims of some nations, but we welcome all the efforts of so many governments and drug manufacturing organizations to develop a vaccine against COVID-19. We will see what happens with vaccines that are apparently being rushed, such as the ones in Russia and the US, but we must wait for those that will meet the established requirements of the World Health Organization.
