Covid Vaccine Updates

1. DR STEVEN QUAY Why You Should Take the First COVID-19 Vaccine That’s Available to You? •Experts say the two COVID-19 vaccines now in use as well as those in clinical trials are highly effective. •They urge people to get the first vaccine that’s available rather than wait on one that might be slightly more effective than another. •Getting a vaccine that’s less effective than others is still much better than having no vaccine at all, they say. Which COVID-19 vaccine should you get? Whichever one you can get into your arm first, medical experts say. When the novel coronavirus first emerged more than a year ago, there was no vaccine to fight the disease. Now, there are two vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with three more in advanced stages of development. The vaccines take different approaches to fighting COVID-19, and effectiveness varies slightly as well. However, experts say the bottom line is that any vaccine is better than no vaccine in preventing you from contracting COVID-19. And, if you do get COVID-19, a vaccine increases the chances that you’ll have a mild rather than severe bout of the illness.

2. “Here’s my attitude toward the vaccine: Get what you can and as soon as you can get it,” Dr. Ramin Ahmadi, the chief medical officer for Graduate Medical Education Global LLC, told Healthline. “Get the first one available,” agreed Dr. Steven Quay, a COVID-19 researcher, author of “Stay Safe: A Physician’s Guide to Survive Coronavirus,” and chief executive officer of Atossa Therapeutics Inc. “They all keep you out of the hospital and keep you from dying, and those are big things.” “Those of us involved with these vaccines were not surprised at how safe and effective they are,” Tan said. “We have now vaccinated more than 20 million people and we see that the sky is not falling.” About 1 in 4 people experience some type of side effects from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, but it’s mostly fever or soreness at the injection point. Rather than being alarmed, vaccine recipients should view such symptoms positively, Tan said. “If I feel crappy, I’m happy because it shows your immune system is doing its job, and I know the vaccine took,” he said. Overall, the COVID-19 vaccines are causing fewer side effects than the vaccine for shingles but somewhat more than the flu shot, according to Tan. Swatting away another myth, he noted that the vaccines can’t give you COVID-19 because the viral material they contain is “absolutely dead.” Pfizer came first

3. On Dec. 11, the FDA granted Trusted Source an emergency use authorization for the first vaccine cleared for use against COVID-19. Developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, the vaccine was authorized for use in people 16 and older. Delivered in two doses, the vaccine was found to be 95 percent effective in preventing severe disease from COVID-19. “While not an FDA approval, today’s emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioN Tech COVID-19 vaccine holds the promise to alter the course of this pandemic in the United States,” said Dr. Peter Marks Trusted Source, PhD, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in a statement Trusted Source at the time. “With science guiding our decision making, the available safety and effectiveness data support the authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine because the vaccine’s known and potential benefits clearly outweigh its known and potential risks,” Marks said. Moderna uses modern strategy A week later, the FDA issued Trusted Source an emergency use authorization for a second two-dose COVID-19 vaccine. This one was developed by pharmaceutical company Moderna. The Moderna vaccine is authorized for use in adults 18 and older, and was found in clinical trials to be 94 percent effective against COVID-19. Like the Pfizer product, the Moderna vaccine doesn’t contain weakened viruses like traditional live attenuated vaccines. A live vaccine would have required far more safety testing and also would have taken a long time to grow in sufficient quantities to distribute to the public, said Mary Premenko-Lanier, PhD, a biosciences research scientist at the nonprofit scientific research institute SRI International.

4. Rather, both vaccines are built around genetic material called mRNA derived from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The mRNA is what the virus uses to build its distinctive spike-shaped protein. “When a person receives this vaccine, their body produces copies of the spike protein, which does not cause disease, but triggers the immune system to learn to react defensively, producing an immune response against SARS-CoV-2,” according to the FDA. Researchers have been working to develop mRNA vaccines for at least a decade, but the need to rapidly respond to the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the technology out of the lab and into practice, Quay said. “It absolutely works the way we hoped it would,” he told Healthline. Johnson & Johnson could be next By the end of 2020, three more vaccine candidates were in phase 3 clinical trials, the last step before possible application for emergency use authorization by the FDA. These vaccines are being developed by AstraZeneca, Janssen (of Johnson & Johnson), and Novavax. Of these three, the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine may be next in line for FDA authorization. On Jan. 29, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies parent Johnson & Johnson announced that the single-dose vaccine was 72 percent effective in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 28 days after vaccination. Severe disease was prevented in 85 percent of cases.

5. “Having an efficacy of 70 to 80 percent is still very good for a vaccine,” Premenko-Lanier told Healthline. “This vaccine has several advantages compared to the existing ones,” Ahmadi said. “It is a single dose… You can store the vaccine for months in a regular refrigerator [both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines must be stored at extremely low temperatures]. And it was effective in the U.K. and South Africa where there are concerns about the new strains,” he said. The Janssen vaccine uses genetically modified inactivated adenoviruses — a group of viruses that includes the common cold — to carry part of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code into the body. The vaccine triggers the body’s immune system to produce antibodies against the virus. Other vaccines in the pipeline Also on Jan. 29, the AstraZeneca vaccine was recommended for use in the European Union, although not yet in the United States. Like the Janssen vaccine, the AstraZeneca injection uses modified adenovirus to provoke an immune response against COVID-19. In studies, researchers who administered the AstraZeneca vaccine in two doses to test people 18 and older found no cases of severe infection or hospitalization for 14 days after the second dose. Quay said the adenovirus approach used in the Janssen and AstraZeneca vaccines has been “well known and well used” over the past 30 to 40 yeas in fighting other diseases, such as Ebola.

6. The Novavax vaccine hasn’t yet been authorized for use in the United States or Europe. However, the company reported on Jan. 28 that the vaccine had a 89 effectiveness rate and has also been shown to be effective against emerging COVID-19 variants first detected in the United Kingdom and South Africa. The biotechnology company uses nanoparticles to carry the virus’s spike proteins into the body to activate the immune system. Tan said that whatever vaccine you get will not only protect your health, but also serve the greater good of helping to end the COVID-19 pandemic. “We need to do everything we can to slow down and stop the spread of this disease,” he said. “The more opportunities you give a virus to replicate, the more opportunities it has to evolve and evade the immune response.”