Experts are hopeful as progress is made for a COVID-19 vaccine.
After Pfizer released news of their COVID-19 vaccine trial, Dr. Paul Goepfert, professor of medicine at UAB and director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic, offered insight on what to expect with the development of this vaccine.
“Let’s just assume this is a vaccine that’s greater than 90 percent effective in preventing transmission of COVID,” Goepfert said. “My understanding is that what happened with the study was that Pfizer accrued 94 cases of COVID, and the majority of those greater than 90 percent were actually in the placebo arm, which is tremendous news, if that is true.”
Goepfert said the high rate of effectiveness served as a pleasant surprise to those working on the vaccine.
“I could tell you that we’ve been working on this vaccine for many many months now,” Goepfert said. “I think the most optimistic of us were thinking about 70 percent effective, so 90 percent effectiveness is fantastic.”
Goepfert said that the next steps in the trial will include obtaining a larger test group, along with seeing how the vaccine affects patients over time.
“The problem now is that it needs to be confirmed in a larger group of individuals,” Goepfert said. “It needs to be shown to be a safe vaccine. Remember that they don’t even have two months of safety data yet after the last immunization.”
Goepfert said that the vaccine was well tolerated among the individuals that received it.
“The majority of people actually had local side effects from the vaccine,” Goepfert said. “Some people had systemic side effects.”
Goepfert said it is unclear when the vaccine will be available to the public.
“Right now, they still haven’t applied for FDA approval,” Goepfert said. “They don’t intend to do that for another month, until they get more safety data. (After) that, they won’t have enough doses to vaccinate everyone in the country, and then there are some distribution issues”
One distribution issue mentioned was that this vaccine must be kept at a certain temperature, which some smaller clinics might not have the means to do. Goepfert said additional funding would be required in order to properly store the vaccine.
While there are challenges that will arise in distribution, Goepfert said the process is moving in the right direction.
“This is extremely good news, I think the world is very happy about this news,” Goepfert said. “This is a big breakthrough for the scientists to develop this type of vaccine.”
As far as efficacy, Goepfert said this vaccine has higher efficacy than the flu vaccine, as the flu changes through the years.
While Pfizer has not yet applied for emergency authorization, Goepfert said he expects they will within another month.
Goepfert said we might be able to lose the masks by this time next year, if all goes to plan. In the meantime, he said he recommends doing what we can to lower the spread of infection.
“Vaccines actually work better if you have lower rates of infection,” Goepfert said. “It will help with vaccine efficacy as well if we can do that.”
