covid19vaccines

The Bright Side Of Covid-19: Seven Opportunities Of The Current Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has a lot of dark sides. Around the world, people get ill and die, schools close, the healthcare system is overloaded, employees lose their jobs, companies face bankruptcy, stock markets collapse and countries have to spend billions on bailouts and medical aid. And for everyone, whether directly hurt or not, Covid-19 is a huge stressor shaking up our psyche, triggering our fears and uncertainties.

No matter how serious and sad all of this is, there are upsides as well. Therefore, along the Monty Python song “Always look on the bright side of life” let’s not forget those and make the best of what the crisis gives us. As the good old SWOT analysis tells us, there are not only threats, but also opportunities. With opportunities I don’t mean that the crisis provides extra business for companies like Zoom and Go to Webinar that enable virtual meetings, or for Amazon, which is planning to hire another 100,000 employees. The latter is probably more a threat than an opportunity for most, especially for the mom & pop stores that go through difficult times already.

With opportunities I mean general opportunities that are available for most people affected by the crisis. The current crisis offers at least seven of them:

Opportunity 1: More time

In today’s overheated economy time is often seen as the most valuable and sparse thing we have. Covid-19 shows why: because we have stacked our week with social gatherings and entertainment such as going to the theater, birthdays, cinema, restaurant, bar, sportclub, gym, music, festivals, concerts and what is more. Suddenly, all of that is cancelled or forbidden, giving us significant amounts of extra time. And still, live goes on. This shows us how easy it is to clear our calendars. Obviously this doesn’t apply to the health-care sector and other crucial sectors, but beyond those it applies to a large majority of sectors.

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The opportunity is that we can spend this time on other things—or even better, on nothing and enjoy the free time. Looking at the crowded parks, waste collection points, garden centres and DIY stores in the last week, many people seem to have a hard time with the latter. Instead of enjoying the extra free time, they fill it immediately with other activities. To seize this first opportunity though, re-arranging how you spend your time and reserving time for nothingness is key. Not just during the crisis, but also after it. The advices in my previous article on the Covid-19 crisis could help in realizing this.

Opportunity 2: Reflect and reconsider

The fact that the coronavirus disrupts our day-t0-day lives provides an opportunity to reflect on things and to reconsider what we do, how we do it and why we do it. Things we took for granted—like going to the gym—are suddenly not possible anymore. Furthermore, many people have had to change their mode of working and work from home instead of at the office. This means that a lot of our routines are interrupted. MORE FOR YOUWhy KPIs Don’t Work; And How To Fix Them How Cisco Takes Care Of Its Employees What Business Leaders Can Learn From The Special Forces

This offers a great opportunity to rethink our habits and routines and make changes. Now that you haven’t been able to go to the restaurant twice a week, commute 2 hours per day, hang out with your friends or go to a party every weekend, you can reflect on whether you really want to continue doing so after the crisis. The virus forces you to make changes to your daily life that you might actually want to keep also after the crisis.

Opportunity 3: Speed and innovation

Many organizations suffer from slow procedures, complex bureaucracies and rigid hierarchies making organizational life less than pleasant. The coronavirus has forced many of them to break through these rigid systems and act instantly. Suddenly procedures can be skipped or accelerated, rules can be side-tracked and decisions can be made more autonomously without formal approval. And suddenly employees are allowed to work from home without direct supervision.

Covid-19 shows that, as soon as there is a strong enough stimulus, things can change. This leads to remarkable innovations. Not being allowed to open their doors, restaurants, for example, are shifting to delivery mode. And schools suddenly do much of the teaching and even some of the testing online. This brings the opportunity to create innovations now that can be maintained after the crisis. And it also can help to keep the current speed and innovation mode afterwards.

Opportunity 4: Better meetings

As referred to in an earlier article, people spend up to 23 hours per week in meetings, half of which are considered a failure or waste of time. The current crisis has forced us to rethink how we deal with meetings. Because in many countries it is not allowed anymore to meet with a group of persons, many meetings are cancelled. And when they still take place they are mostly virtual and shorter.

As such, it provides an excellent opportunity for resolving one of the most disliked parts of organizational life. The technology for this is already present and mature for a couple of years, but the coronavirus triggers a sudden need for it. The real opportunity here is to make systematic changes so that meetings will be more effective, also after the crisis.

Opportunity 5: Reconnect and help

Challenging times offer a great opportunity for social bonding and other ways of connecting to and helping people. Of course, not being able to visit friends or family has increased isolation and feelings of loneliness in some cases. But the feeling of “we’re in this together” has also triggered interesting ways of connecting. Some of those have gone viral—such as Italians singing together from their windows and balconies—but there are many small, local initiatives too to connect and help people who need it.

In the individualized societies many of us live in, this provides opportunities to reconnect and create more social coherence. Not only during the crisis, but also afterwards. This opportunity comes with a big caveat though. Parallel to these nice initiatives we also witness how far people go to protect themselves and their families. People hoard food, medicine, toilet paper and guns without thinking a second of others. However, while it triggers self-serving egocentric behavior too, the Covid-19 crisis does provide us the opportunity to reconnect and show our social side.

Opportunity 6: Cleaner environment

The virus caused a shutdown or dramatical decrease of industrial activities. Factories are closed or operate far below their capacity, road traffic has reduced radically and air traffic collapsed, and the lack of tourism has emptied the streets in overcrowded cities like Venice, Amsterdam and New York. While this may be bad news for most people and especially those working in the affected industries, this is also good news for our planet. Covid-19 causes a significant reduction in green house gasses and other air, water and land polluting outputs. In Venice this has allegedly led to dolphins return after just a couple of weeks (although some argued this to be a hoax).

Whether the particular example is a hoax or not is not so relevant. The fact is that the shutdown and lockdown of large parts of our economy is good for nature—at least on the short term. The opportunity this provides, is to keep parts of this in place also after the crisis to make long-term improvements. Along the line of the previous opportunities, the current crisis provides us an opportunity to reconsider our lives and reorganize it in a way that has less impact on our planet.

Opportunity 7: Modesty and acceptance

The final opportunity that the Covid-19 crisis offers, is a chance to create awareness for the moderate role we play on this planet and accept that things cannot always go as we want them to go. The Covid-19 pandemic is a global crisis chat is unprecedented in modern peace time. We had other pandemics like SARS, but their impact was less substantial. And we had the 1973 oil crisis, but that was a man-made crisis. The coronavirus is not man-made and yet disrupts lives across the planet.

As such, the virus shows us that, no matter how well-planned and organized we are and no matter how much we live in the Anthropocene—the era characterized by significant human impact—we are not in control. One simple virus is disrupting everything. This offers a great opportunity. In almost every aspect of life we want to be in control. Whether it is health, airline safety or our calendars, we live in the illusion that full control is possible. The virus can help us create awareness that this is not the case. It provides an opportunity to take a more modest role and accept that many things are simply beyond our control.

Once again, the Covid-19 crisis has a large dark side. But as these seven opportunities show, it has positive sides as well. Since all seven opportunities require a quite fundamental change in how we approach the world, seizing them can take substantial time. In that sense, and if we keep on looking at the brighter sides of life, the longer the crisis lasts, the larger the opportunities are and the bigger the chances are of actually making changes to our deeply rooted habits and convictions. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

I help companies do strategy through training, mentoring and consulting. My drive is to bring you and your organization to the next level with strategy approaches that work. I wrote “Strategy Consulting,” “Nor More Bananas,” and “The Strategy Handbook.” Reach out to me via jeroenkraaijenbrink.com, LinkedIn or jk@kraaijenbrink.com

Pat Flynn 282K subscribers 26 million Americans are without a job right now, and that’s just in the U.S. alone. It’s a terrible situation, one that I’m all too familiar with myself having gotten laid off during the recession in 2008. These are tough times, but there are opportunities within them, too. I was able to build a business back in 2008 as a result of getting laid off, and I imagine that those who focus on the future, and the ability to create something new now, are the ones who are going to come out of this dire situation best.

This College Professor Became An Overnight Billionaire Fighting Covid

Every time you’re infected by bacteria or a virus, your immune system works to create treatments to defeat it. Molecularly unique to each person, these tiny cells, or antibodies, either destroy these invaders or mark them for other killer cells to track down.

Carl Hansen, 46, is geeking out as he describes the process over Zoom. “We can make 100 trillion different antibodies,” he exclaims. “The immune system is spectacular beyond description.”

If that sounds more like a college professor than the CEO of a $13 billion (market cap) biotech company, there’s a reason: Hansen was one—until 2019, when he left to focus on Vancouver-based AbCellera Biologics, cofounded with fellow researchers from the University of British Columbia in 2012. “Universities are very good at testing new ideas and looking for which road might be effective,” he says.

The team’s academic bent has played out in an even more important way. Nearly all biotech startups develop a handful of treatment targets, then spend the next 8 to 12 years developing those drugs, hoping to bring at least one of them to market. It’s not a sure thing—fewer than 10% of new drugs make it all the way. But when they do, they tend to be blockbusters: Seven of the ten top-selling drugs in 2018 were antibody treatments, including AbbVie’s $19 billion (net revenue) immunosuppressive drug Humira and Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda, which generated $11.1 billion in 2019.

AbCellera takes a vastly different approach. Instead of trying to build a vertically integrated drug company, it is focused solely on the discovery process. That’s the portion of drug development that is earliest and most essential: It’s there that the most promising treatment prospects are selected, subjected to early laboratory tests and then moved through the pipeline.

But AbCellera, which raised $105 million from investors including Peter Thiel, the University of Minnesota and OrbiMed in May—at a valuation of $4.8 billion, according to PitchBook, just six months before going public—is not interested in seeing it through from beginning to end. Instead it offers what might be described as “drug discovery as a service.” It works with 90 outside businesses, including pharma giants Pfizer, Gilead and Novartis. Those companies ask the biotech to find antibodies that meet certain criteria. AbCellera then uses its proprietary technology to find prospects.

In its highest-profile success to date, AbCellera examined thousands of antibodies derived from the blood of people who had recovered from Covid-19 in order to identify the antibodies that did the best job fighting the virus. It then turned over the most promising antibodies to drug company Eli Lilly. Clinical trials of one of those antibodies, bamlanivimab, began in May—just 90 days after the partnership started. Tests found patients with mild or moderate cases had good results, and in November, the antibody received emergency-use authorization from the FDA.

The federal government has contracted to purchase 950,000 doses of the drug for $1.2 billion. Eli Lilly issued guidance in mid-December expecting up to $2 billion in revenue from Covid-19 therapeutics in 2021, the bulk of which will come from bamlanivimab; AbCellera, which booked $25 million through the end of September 2020, will earn estimated royalties of $270 million on those sales, according to Credit Suisse.

AbCellera is also looking to speed up the time it takes to develop its antibody therapies. The shorter time frame saves millions in development costs while enabling revenues to come in sooner than expected. “From a financial perspective, every year that you save is a huge opportunity cost for investors,” says Gal Munda, an analyst at Berenberg Capital Markets.

Hansen is now worth $3 billion, thanks to the company’s white-hot December IPO. Asked about his meteoric rise into the three-comma club, Hansen is low-key: “It feels just a little bit surreal.” He’s more articulate about the biotech’s success: “If this example of Covid shows one thing, to me, it’s the proof point of the business model and the technology.”Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website. Send me a secure tip.

Alex Knapp

I’m a senior editor at Forbes covering healthcare, science, and cutting edge technology.

CNBC Television

AbCellera Biologics CEO Carl Hansen joins ‘Closing Bell’ to discuss the company’s partnership with Eli Lilly in developing monoclonal antibody treatment and the company’s Covid-19 treatments. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2NGeIvi » Subscribe to CNBC TV: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBCtelevision » Subscribe to CNBC: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBC » Subscribe to CNBC Classic: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBCclassic Turn to CNBC TV for the latest stock market news and analysis. From market futures to live price updates CNBC is the leader in business news worldwide. The News with Shepard Smith is CNBC’s daily news podcast providing deep, non-partisan coverage and perspective on the day’s most important stories. Available to listen by 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT daily beginning September 30: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/29/the-n… Connect with CNBC News Online Get the latest news: http://www.cnbc.com/ Follow CNBC on LinkedIn: https://cnb.cx/LinkedInCNBC Follow CNBC News on Facebook: https://cnb.cx/LikeCNBC Follow CNBC News on Twitter: https://cnb.cx/FollowCNBC Follow CNBC News on Instagram: https://cnb.cx/InstagramCNBC https://www.cnbc.com/select/best-cred..

AstraZeneca Battles Supply Chain Issues, Denies Claims Its Covid-19 Vaccine Is Largely Ineffective In Seniors

Pharma giant AstraZeneca could face strict new export rules from the European Union that could restrict supply of its Covid-19 vaccine outside the bloc, as officials pressure the company to explain production shortfalls, while the company denies claims in German media that its vaccine is mostly ineffective in seniors.

Key Facts

Citing government sources, two German papers reported Monday that the efficacy of the vaccine AstraZeneca developed with the University of Oxford was “less than 10%” and 8% in those over 65.

AstraZeneca said the claims are “completely incorrect” and go against published data from its clinical trials which showed a significant response in over-65s..

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Oxford University , which developed the vaccine with AstraZeneca, told the Financial Times there is “no basis for the claims of very low efficacy.”

The German health ministry also rejected the reports Tuesday, suggesting that the newspapers had got confused with the statistics.

The confusion comes as tensions between AstraZeneca and the European Union soar to new levels, with the bloc furious at the company’s apparent inability or refusal to explain why it cannot honor its agreements and threatening to introduce new export rules for vaccines leaving the Union.

Forbes has contacted AstraZeneca to find out whether its supply chain issues and export rules could threaten vaccine supply to other parts of the world.

Key Background

On Friday, AstraZeneca informed Brussels that production issues meant it would be unable to honor its contractual commitments to provide doses to the EU. The vaccine is expected to be approved shortly and the delays mark another setback for the bloc’s vaccination efforts, which are already being hampered by a temporary reduction in deliveries from Pfizer while it makes changes to its production site.

Chief Critic

The EU stopped short of directly accusing AstraZeneca of reneging on its contracts in order to sell doses elsewhere, but said: “The European Union wants to know exactly which doses have been produced by AstraZeneca and where exactly so far and if or to whom they have been delivered,” Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said in a statement.

Later, Kyriakides tweeted that discussions with the pharma giant “resulted in dissatisfaction” and there was a “lack of clarity and insufficient explanations.

What To Watch For

The EU may follow through on its threat to implement new vaccine export rules. This would require companies to seek permission before exporting internationally.

Big Number

31 million. This is how many doses the bloc is now expecting before the end of March, an EU official told Reuters. That amounts to a 60% cut.

Researchers Warn of Heightened Risk of HIV With Certain COVID-19 Vaccines

As the race to approval of a safe and effective vaccine for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues, a group of researchers is warning some of these vaccines could make patients more susceptible to contracting HIV.

Writing in The Lancet, the researchers are urging caution when it comes to the use of adenovirus type-5 (Ad5) vectored vaccines for COVID-19, recalling their research from a decade ago on an Ad5 vectored vaccine in 2 HIV vaccine trials.

“On the basis of these findings, we are concerned that use of an Ad5 vector for immunisation against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) could similarly increase the risk of HIV-1 acquisition among men who receive the vaccine,” wrote the researchers. “Both the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics disproportionately affect vulnerable populations globally. Roll-out of an effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccine globally could be given to populations at risk of HIV infection, which could potentially increase their risk of HIV-1 acquisition.”

There are several clinical trials assessing Ad5 vectored vaccine candidates underway, including by China’s CanSino Biologics and California-based ImmunityBio.

The group’s ”cautionary tale” stems from the Step and Phambili phase 2b trials that studied the efficacy of an Ad5 vectored HIV-1 vaccine in preventing HIV infection. Across both international studies, they found that the vaccine actually increased the risk of HIV among the vaccinated men.

The findings from the Phambili study, in particular, have important implications for the use of the vaccines in COVID-19, according to the researchers, as findings from this study showed that heterosexual men receiving the Ad5 vectored vaccine faced a consistently increased risk of HIV infection. Notably, this increased risk appeared to be limited to men, with women not having an observed increase of infection in the study.

In the Step trial, the risk of acquiring HIV was particularly high among men who were uncircumcised and Ad5 seropositive men who reported having unprotected anal sex with a partner who was HIV seropositive or who had unknown serostatus as baseline.

Of note, the vaccine in both studies did not have the HIV envelope. Meanwhile, in another study that used a DNA prime and an Ad5 vector, both of which had the HIV envelope, there was no observed increase in HIV infection.

The reason for the observed increase in HIV risk remains uncertain, although several follow-up studies have suggested a potential explanation, according to the researchers.

“The vaccine was highly immunogenic in the induction of HIV-specific CD4 and CD8 T cells; however, there was no difference in the frequency of T-cell responses after vaccination in men who did and did not later become infected with HIV in the Step Study,” they wrote. “These findings suggest that immune responses induced by the HIV-specific vaccine were not the mechanism of increased acquisition.

Participants with high frequencies of preimmunisation Ad5-specific T cells were associated with a decreased magnitude of HIV-specific CD4 responses and recipients of the vaccine had a decreased breadth of HIV-specific CD8 responses, suggesting that pre-existing Ad5 immunity might dampen desired vaccine-induced responses.”

Other exploratory studies have indicated that the vaccine enhances HIV replication in CD4 T cells or that Ad5-specific CD4 T cells could be more susceptible to HIV infection.

Jaime Rosenberg

Reference

Buchbinder SP, McElrath MJ, Dieffenback C, Corey L. Use of adenovirus type-5 vectored vaccines: a cautionary tale. Lancet. Published online October 19, 2020.doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32156-5

Source: http://ajmc.com

ENewsTrends

A new paper warns the link between COVID-19 vaccines and HIV risk.

Mayo Clinic

Nearly half of people in the U.S. diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are over 50, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HIV damages the body’s immune system, and interferes with the body’s ability to fight infection and disease. Does that make it more difficult to fight off COVID-19? Dr. Stacey Rizza, an infectious diseases specialist at Mayo Clinic, says, “We know that anybody who has a suppressed immune system may have an altered response to the virus that causes COVID-19. We know that older people whose immune systems are a little weaker, and people who have medical issues or organ diseases, are going to generally do worse with the infection.

If somebody has HIV and their immune system is weaker, meaning they’re not on therapy, or they’re earlier on in their therapy and their CD4 count is still low, they may be at risk of having a worse reaction to the virus. We will learn more about SARS-CoV-2 on people living with HIV over time.” Read more: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/di… More health and medical news on the Mayo Clinic News Network. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/ Journalists: Clean and nat sound versions of this pkg available for download at https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/ Register (free) at https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/re…

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Pfizer Has A Head Start, But The Covid-19 Vaccine Market Is Still Up For Grabs

Pfizer and BioNTech pulled ahead in the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine this week, announcing preliminary data showing 90% effectiveness. Financial markets rallied on the tantalizing prospect that a return to normalcy is getting closer. But the lead may be short-lived as competitors, whose vaccines may be easier to transport or administer, are gearing up to report data in the coming weeks and months. “Pfizer will probably have a first-mover advantage, but won’t last that long,” says Damien Conover, director of healthcare equity research at Morningstar. “It’ll probably only be two or three months at the most.”

While there are winners and losers in normal drug development, with the first company to enter a particular therapeutic area often gaining a significant advantage, that isn’t the case with Covid-19 vaccines, says Bunny Ellerin, director of the Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program at Columbia Business School. “The pandemic affects everybody. The universe of people that you need to cover is huge,” she says. “There’s no one player that can provide vaccines for the entire world.”

One of the main reasons why Pfizer’s preliminary data was so striking is that the mechanism the vaccine uses, messenger RNA or mRNA, has never been approved for use in humans before. To have 90% effectiveness, even among a small number of patients in ongoing trials, is very high compared to other common vaccines. For example, the yearly influenza vaccine can reduce the risk of flu from around 40% to 60%, depending on the year. “It’s tremendously powerful for the industry,” says Ellerin. “It shows that this platform can work and therefore will be used in the future.” It also bodes well for biotech company Moderna, which is developing a competing mRNA-based vaccine, and is planning to release interim data soon.

A supply of coarse dry ice pellets. Leon Neal/Getty Images

The Distribution Dilemma

The downside of the current formulation of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is that it needs to be stored at ultra-low temperatures instead of the usual 2 to 8℃ (36 to 46℉) for many vaccines on the market. As Pfizer collects more stability data, it has determined the vaccine can stay at 2 to 8℃ for up to 5 days, but longer term storage needs to be around -70℃ (-94℉). “There’s never been a vaccine in the United States that required that kind of storage temperature prior to use,” says Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director for immunization education at the Immunization Action Coalition and an external advisor to Pfizer.

This poses a unique challenge, given that there isn’t much ultra-low capacity freezer space in the United States or globally, says Prashant Yadav, an expert on healthcare supply chains and a professor at INSEAD. “The only places where we have ultra-cold chain equipment are either academic medical centers, so fairly big hospital systems, or a few of the sites that FedEx, UPS or [the big distributors] have created,” he says.

The usual route for routine vaccines is to go from the manufacturer to a big distribution center, run by a company like McKesson, Cardinal or AmeriSource Bergen, which then sends them to another stocking warehouse outside of major metropolitan areas, says Yadav. From there, the vaccines are sent to doctor’s offices, pharmacies, and hospitals as needed, which requires refrigerators in the warehouses and at the point of care.

There are some freezers available for certain products, like oncology drugs and clinical trial materials, but these usually run from 0 to -20℃ (32 to -4℉), which isn’t cold enough for Pfizer’s vaccine. “The only way to distribute will then be to ship the product, either almost daily, or at least multiple times a week from the manufacturer to the point of vaccination” for ultra-cold chain products, says Yadav.

Other vaccines in development don’t need to be frozen and will only require refrigeration.

That’s Pfizer’s initial plan, to store its Covid-19 vaccines at ultra-cold storage sites in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and then send them directly from there to point of use, according to a spokesperson. Pfizer, which is continuing to study storage conditions at warmer temperatures, has also designed special thermal shippers, “which can be used as temporary storage units by refilling with dry ice for up to 15 days of storage.”

A Moderna spokesperson said the company expects its mRNA vaccine to be stored at -20℃ (-4℉), “which is an easier and more established protocol than deep freezing,” and close in temperature to a home freezer. “We expect to allow refrigerated conditions of 2 to 8℃ (36 to 46℉) for up to about a week,” the company said.

But other vaccines in development that use different mechanisms, such as the protein subunit vaccine being developed by Novavax, don’t need to be frozen and will only require refrigeration, potentially making them easier to distribute through existing channels. The federal government’s Operation Warp Speed program is providing $1.6 billion to support large-scale manufacturing of 100 million doses of Novavax’s vaccine candidate. The program has also provided up to nearly $2 billion in funding to Moderna for the development and manufacturing of 100 million doses of its vaccine candidate, as well as agreed to purchase up to 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, once it gets regulatory approval, at a price of $1.95 billion.

In the first phase, the program “anticipates having a limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines to distribute, which should ease initial concern over potential long-term storage of vaccine doses,” according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson. “The intent is to distribute vaccines to state-identified locations when vaccine administration can quickly follow, meaning that frequently the vaccines will be administered before needing to use storage other than the containers the vaccines are shipped in.” The effort includes the CDC, Department of Defense, private sector companies and state governments.

Florida Volunteers Take Part In COVID-19 Vaccine Trials — A volunteer gets a vaccine as part of the Operation Warp Speed program. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

One Shot Too Many?

One of the other logistical hurdles is that the majority of vaccine candidates require a two-shot regimen, meaning patients get one shot and then must return for a second shot around 3 weeks later. While common vaccines, like the flu, may have pre-filled syringes or one-shot doses, most of the Covid-19 vaccines are going to be shipped in multi-dose vials. That means once providers open the vial, they must use the contents within 24-hours. “If we were to wait for things to be more convenient, thousands and thousands of people would die in the meantime, and that’s not a price we’re willing to pay,” says Moore, who is advising Pfizer.

During a pandemic, the first step is getting a safe and effective vaccine to market, with advancements like one-shot doses coming further down the line. The exception is Johnson & Johnson, which is one of the only companies that is evaluating both single-dose and two-dose regimens as part of its Phase 3 trial. The company has received $456 million in federal funding for development and $1 billion for the first 100 million doses.

Covid-19 vaccines will likely need to be given to large numbers of people in one go, so as not to waste any of the product given the temperature and multi-dosing constraints. “Mass vaccination clinics are not not something that we typically think of for routine immunization, but it’s certainly something that public health and healthcare facilities are very familiar with,” Moore says, harkening as far back as the 1950s when the polio vaccine was given to children in school. The first priority will be to inoculate frontline workers taking care of Covid-19 patients, and then moving to high-risk populations. The general public should set realistic expectations, given that the rollout won’t happen overnight.

Human behavior will also be a factor when it comes to who decides to get immunized and who opts-out.

And even with all of the planning by companies and governments, there will still be some kinks along the way. On average, there is around 5 to 10% general wastage of vaccines, due to a range of issues, varying from incorrect storage temperature to open multidose vials and not having enough patients within the given period, says Yadav, the supply chain expert. “The production of vaccines is largely a technical feat,” he says. “But once it gets out of Pfizer’s factory gate, it’s not just about the logistics science, it starts to get into social science, because human behavior is at play.”

Human behavior will also be a factor when it comes to who decides to get immunized and who opts-out. The speed at which the companies and government are trying to get Covid-19 vaccines to market means there isn’t the type of long-term data associated with other vaccines. A big unanswered question is “how well does this vaccine work to keep you from getting infected compared to how well does it work to keep you from getting sick?” says Moore.

One of the biggest issues with Covid-19 is asymptomatic spread, meaning people who don’t show outward signs of a viral infection but are spreading it to others. If the vaccine reduces symptoms but doesn’t stop infection, that means communities would have to continue other protocols, like mask-wearing and social distancing for longer than expected. It’s also not clear for how long immunity might last.

“The public needs to understand why vaccine manufacturers and experts in vaccines think that despite this uncertainty, we feel like it’s a good idea to move forward with vaccinating the public anyway and not waiting,” says Moore. “We will continue to gather information, so that we can address those areas of uncertainty in the months ahead and years ahead, and finally put this pandemic to rest.” Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Send me a secure tip.

Katie Jennings

I am a staff writer at Forbes covering healthcare, with a focus on digital health and new technologies. I was previously a healthcare reporter for POLITICO covering the European Union from Brussels and the New Jersey Statehouse from Trenton. I have also written for the Los Angeles Times and Business Insider. I was a 2019-2020 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in business and economics reporting at Columbia University. Email me at kjennings@forbes.com or find me on Twitter @katiedjennings.

Associated Press

Pfizer says an early peek at its vaccine data suggests the shots may be 90% effective at preventing COVID-19. This is “the first peek behind the curtain,” says Paul Duprex, director of University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Vaccine Research. (Nov. 9) Subscribe for more Breaking News: http://smarturl.it/AssociatedPress Website: https://apnews.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP Facebook: https://facebook.com/APNews Google+: https://plus.google.com/1158922418018… Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you…

Tag: covid19vaccines

The Bright Side Of Covid-19: Seven Opportunities Of The Current Pandemic

Opportunity 1: More time

Opportunity 2: Reflect and reconsider

Opportunity 3: Speed and innovation

Opportunity 4: Better meetings

Opportunity 5: Reconnect and help

Opportunity 6: Cleaner environment

Opportunity 7: Modesty and acceptance

Like this:

This College Professor Became An Overnight Billionaire Fighting Covid

Like this:

AstraZeneca Battles Supply Chain Issues, Denies Claims Its Covid-19 Vaccine Is Largely Ineffective In Seniors

Key Facts

Key Background

Chief Critic

What To Watch For

Big Number

Further Reading

Like this:

Researchers Warn of Heightened Risk of HIV With Certain COVID-19 Vaccines

Like this:

Pfizer Has A Head Start, But The Covid-19 Vaccine Market Is Still Up For Grabs

The Distribution Dilemma

One Shot Too Many?

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Opportunity 1: More time

Opportunity 2: Reflect and reconsider

Opportunity 3: Speed and innovation

Opportunity 4: Better meetings

Opportunity 5: Reconnect and help

Opportunity 6: Cleaner environment

Opportunity 7: Modesty and acceptance

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Key Facts

Key Background

Chief Critic

What To Watch For

Big Number

Further Reading

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The Distribution Dilemma

One Shot Too Many?

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