Vaccines for Covid-19 (Effectiveness and any side effects)

Having now heard some Scientists commenting on this Pfizer vaccine the storage problems are going to make this one a lot more difficult to deploy widely so this is less encouraging than it might have been earlier today.

These are the parameters for the cold chain for this vaccine.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/he...s-at-subzero-temperatures-during-distribution

I'm optimistic Mike, this is only the first vaccine, there are going to be others let's hope the others are easier to store and transport, I'm starting to lean on the side of of a vaccine that might be 60% effective but pretty much guaranteed not to have spoiled.

Yeah this will be a major hurdle as I mentioned yesterday in post #14 the anti-vaxxers will be out in force.

Having heard a bit more on the radio about the cold-chain, here are some details they mentioned.

This vaccine will be manufactured in Belgium, the temperature has to be controlled in a very tight range at -70 C or at 203 Kelvin, it can't be out of it's temperature range more than 4 times before it is used, and it is unlikely that doctors surgeries will have equipment that can manage these temperature ranges it is colder than liquid CO2 and a lot hotter than liquid nitrogen so I don't know what cooling tech will actually work but there must be one.

It is stable enough to be out of the lowest temperature range for up to a max of 48 hours at the point of use but I would guess the effectiveness is dropping a bit the closer it gets to that time range.

It's going to be a challenge to get this to care homes under the right conditions and this is one of the very early targets for this vaccine.

The vaccine requires two doses 21 days apart and you are not protected until up to 14 days after that, so you are looking at a 5 week delay in feedback, and maybe 2 to 3 months before you know if it is preventing transmission, and this 5 week delay this also means that some people will get infected after vaccination but before it has worked for them which will muddy the data in terms of efficacy.

But it is still good news and as you say the hurdles can be overcome, personally I would be happier with a vaccine that had less tight tolerances but beggars can't be choosers.

It'll be the oldest first, but yeah I hope they take a top down approach.

Ok I've found out that the refrigerant is Dry Ice solid CO2, and the trick is going to be the final stages where it is brought up closer to room temperature just prior to being administered to patients, the logistics are seen as challenging.

It is believed that less advanced countries and those in warmer climates may elect to go for one of the other vaccines that might become available.

Some of the information in the New Scientist article makes me a little more confident that the logistics will be possible to manage.