Our choice of vaccine has to be dependent on whether the data have been gathered with scientific rigour
This is slated to be the year of minimising the impact of COVID-19. While mutants of the virus pose a new threat, the only viable strategy to curb COVID-19 has been to develop vaccines. The fast-paced scientific work done to develop the vaccines is unparalleled. Within a year of COVID-19 being identified, several vaccines have become available. What do we know about these vaccines?
Types of vaccines
The result of the trial of Pfizer and BioNTech’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine was submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2020. It showed 95% efficacy in adults ages over 65. However, the infrastructure for the delivery and storage of the vaccine under fastidious requirements of -70°C is not easy to achieve. Equally, this vaccine has come under a cloud, with 29 deaths of elderly people with pre-existing illnesses reported in Norway following administration…