SHARES
“I am worried, how safe are the new COVID-19 vaccines? Don’t vaccines take 10 years to develop? These vaccines took less than a year! Maybe I should wait first? Let others be the guinea pigs!” Many people express this concern.
It does not help when misinformation circulates around about dangers of mRNA Covid-91 vaccines, making more people fearful and hesitant.
People, allay these fears! Hear what immunology, virus and public health experts around the globe have to say.
Points about Covid-19 vaccines Development
- Most of the waiting in ~10 year vaccine development are because of regulatory red tape, paperwork and getting funding. Because of the unprecedented global economic and social crisis, COVID vaccine development went at lightning speed. Cutting of red tapes, making massive funding available, and governments giving support accelerated the whole process.
- Scientists were able to act quickly on coronavirus research which started years earlier when SARS and MERS broke. They were able to identify the spike protein as the key to induce an immune response against COVID-19. So in essence coronavirus vaccine research work has actually started with the advent of SARS in 2003!
- The first 2 Covid-19 vaccines to reach the market are using new mRNA technology. At the start of the outbreak in Jan 2020, Chinese researchers shared a full genetic sequence of COVID-19 virus. Scientists riding on existing RNA research used this information to develop vaccines that will contain a small amount of this genetic code. This genetic code acts like a messenger, when it enters certain cells in the body, causes production of elements of the COVID-19 virus, the spike protein. Whilst the spike protein does not infect, it triggers the immune system to respond to it.
- All 3 phases of clinical trials of the development process adhered to the same high standards normal in clinical trials. Safety monitoring was just as stringent.
- Massive funding has allowed vaccine makers to run multiple trials in parallel and regulators moving quickly in tandem with manufacturing ramping up whilst the vaccines are trialing.
Scientists working on vaccines
What about long term side effects?
We don’t know. There is no guarantee. We will have to wait a year or two for the longer term safety profile of trial participants. To withhold vaccines and wait for another one or two years will mean infection spreading out to the wider population and more deaths. It is a calculated risk that the unknown long term side effect is very low, therefore benefit outweighs the risk
The world was able to develop COVID-19 vaccines at super speed because of leveraging on years of previous research and simultaneously gearing up manufacturing. Moving trials in parallel and priority from regulators allow a very speedy development.
But vaccine is not the silver bullet yet as the virus is new, it is an unknown how long immunity will last. It depends too on how the virus mutates but the good thing is that it mutates relatively slowly and there is a good body of research on this family of virus. For now scientists are quietly confident that the vaccines will still be able to protect against the new more infectious variant of the virus circulating in Europe, Africa and turning up in some parts of Asia.
References:
Here’s why you should not be alarmed: https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/11/less-than-a-year-to-develop-a-covid-vaccine-heres-why-you-shouldnt-be-alarmed/ Dated 30 Nov 2020
The lightning quest for Covid vaccines: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1 Dated 18 Dec 2020, accessed 7 Jan 2020.
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by Wong Mei Chan
View all articles by Wong Mei Chan.
