COVID-19 First Generation Vaccines Should Halve the Risk of Infection

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, reports that the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines will give people who have vaccinated a 50% lower chance of getting infected than somebody who hasn’t been vaccinated.

US Operation Warp Speed is giving billions to private pharma companies to try to get a widely deployed vaccine by January 2021. Operation Warp Speed’s goal is to produce and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021.

Clinical trials are still taking enough time to gather the safety and effectiveness data needed for approval.

The first vaccines will also probably need two shots per person.

When Operation Warp Speed spends $1-2 billion to support vaccine manufacturing then the U.S. Government will own the resulting 100 million doses of vaccine and will have the option to acquire more.

March 30: HHS announced $456 million in funds for Johnson & Johnson’s (Janssen) candidate vaccine. Phase 1 clinical trials began in Belgium on July 24th and in the U.S on July 27th.

April-July Moderna has gotten $955 million and is now in Phase 3.

In August, $1.5 billion in funds to support the large-scale manufacturing and delivery of Moderna’s investigational vaccine candidate.

In May, HHS gave $1.2 billion in support for AstraZeneca’s candidate vaccine, developed in conjunction with the University of Oxford. This is also in Phase 3.

In July, HHS announced $1.6 billion in funds to support the large-scale manufacturing of Novavax’s vaccine candidate.

In July, HHS announced up to $1.95 billion in funds to Pfizer for the large-scale manufacturing and nationwide distribution of 100 million doses of their vaccine candidate.

In July, HHS gave $450 million in funds to support the large-scale manufacturing of Regeneron’s COVID-19 investigational anti-viral antibody treatment, REGN-COV2.

In July, $2 billion will be provided for the advanced development, including clinical trials and large scale manufacturing, of Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) investigational adjuvanted vaccine.

In August, $1 billion for the large-scale manufacturing and delivery of Johnson & Johnson’s investigational vaccine candidate.

SOURCES- Health and Human Services, UPI
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

28 thoughts on “COVID-19 First Generation Vaccines Should Halve the Risk of Infection”

  1. CDC serology surveys indicate that the true infection rate is ~4-13x the reported infection rate depending on local. Many people are asymptomatic and never get tested (but can still spread the virus).

  2. No sarcasm. trump's #1 goal is to get re-elected. If he can win by lying about a unproven vaccine, he will do so.

  3. Swine flu vaccine was also rushed out of panic. GB resulted with many deaths from that complication of vaccine. Anything can happen when things go sloppy out of hysteria.

  4. We're going to need something much better than 50% effective in the medium term. Coronavirus immunity doesn't typically last more than a few years, so it could be that many people already infected will be susceptible to reinfection eventually. If everyone is immunized with 50% effective vaccine, it would certainly help contain outbreaks and have them grow more slowly, but we might need to undergo further lockdowns in future in combination and continue social distancing. I'd be decidedly on the fence about taking an untested vaccine to gain perhaps 50% chance of immunity (and you don't know if you're immune until its too late! A bit of Russian roulette).

  5. I hope you are just sarcastic here. It is terrible how that virus has become politicised. 
    It must hurt some people, that there is a rather large observational study from Belgium out, that says that Hydroxichloroquine given at the right dose reduces the rate of fatalaties by 30%. 
    Apparently in other studies people were given much higher than the recommended dose and that had negative effects.
    One has to ask why? The doctors who did that should be questioned.

  6. The optimist in me says at least on of the vaccines will be quite effective. I hope that I will have access to it. I am fed up with being inconvenienced by regulations.

  7. I assume the downvote was my 25.2 million maximum claim and address that. There have been 79,307,056 tests. The tests are upwards of 95% accurate. We have 6,038,870 positive cases. That is a 7.6145% positive rate. If we act like people were tested at random then given the population of the US, 25,227,286 should have been infected. Thing is a fairly large fraction of the people tested had some symptoms that made them think they might have it. Certainly more than any random sample, thus it would almost certainly have to be below that 25.2 million because those tested would have a higher probability of actually being infected.
    Now maybe you could argue that many of those who got it early never got tested because of test availability and just choosing not to stress the healthcare system.
    So I went back. After some math I come up with 9.1 million cases (3.1m higher than official number). I went back to a week that had good data July 12-18 and looked at hospitalizations, tests and positives for that week. Tests were widely avalible and over 5.6 million were administered. I also found the total number of Hospitalizations to date 502,588. Ratio and proportions gets 9.1 million cases. This would be the number we would have if we had the testing all along.
    So I am sure you are even less satisfied with the number,because it is smaller but that is a realistic number. 2.03% fatality rate. To check if this makes sense I added togther the 5 countries that tested everyone and got 1.81%

  8. Another year of testing and you won't need a vaccine. Right now it is a race between the vaccine makers and COVID and my bet is on COVID.

  9. Under 70 its got an ifr of less 0.04% so not really that dangerous.

    The moderna vaccine gives 80% of the people who receive it a medium to severe reaction. Id like to see another year of testing for safety. For medium to long term affects

  10. That's a load of speculative nonsense.

    Without actual testing to verify such numbers it is nothing more than hot air to spout such a figure as 35%.

  11. Increasing mask wearing and reducing unnecessary grouping indoors will reduce it beneath 1.0 anyway – plenty of countries have already hit that threshold.

  12. If I had that cold before, I'd fight it off that fast because I already had the immunity, so at worst it would be redundant, at best a booster.

    I do understand why you'd prefer something that could be shut down with an antibiotic if you turned out to be especially vulnerable.

  13. A maximum of 25.2 million Americans (roughly 1 in 13) have been infected and quite possibily less than half of that number.
    It is possible that number could go up substantially, but I don't think it will. It could double by February…hopefully not (by February I think there will be 2 or 3 vaccines available). Because with a doubling, would come a lot of hospitalizations and deaths. And that might be at 1 in 6 or 7 or something like that.
    We are definitely going to need the vaccine, and ideally at least 200 million vaccinated.

    Also once there is an approved vaccine, a lot of people will put their masks away, that could cause another surge, at least until people are actually vaccinated in large numbers. Polititions will also be eager to claim victory early, and will be eager to make people happy and stop the mask requirements.

    In some very hard hit areas like New York and New Jersey, you might be right, but then there are always people passing through from other areas. That is part of why those areas were hit so hard early. That under 1.0 needs to be everywhere or you will have flareups in those other areas.

    However, I am more optimistic on this than it looks, because I think quick testing will grow dramatically. And if those found positive will quarantine, and I think most people would, this thing could be reduced dramatically well before the vaccines show up.

  14. Certain population centers are also approaching herd immunity. Dharavi in India has reached herd immunity and hasn't had a positive test in over a month. Based on serology surveys, approximately 35% of South Florida's population has had COVID-19. Etc.

  15. I think testing is still a very big piece of the puzzle. If we test enough and get most of the infected people quarantining in their homes the spread will be reduced substantially. Abbott labs is planning to ramp up its testing to 50 million a month. For context, consider that there have been a total of 78.8 million tests done in the US to this point: 
    These 5 minute https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/26/abbott-wins-us-authorization-for-5-rapid-covid-19-antigen.html
    These $5, 15 minute tests could be a game changer. I bought a few shares months ago. I think if they execute, and also get this in many countries, it could be more effective than anything we have done so far to combat the disease.
    It is a great stopgap until there is wide availability of the vaccines.
    If we really want to track this thing down, then we have to test people multiple times. Medical people and nursing home staff can be tested daily or weekly. Bank tellers, grocery clerks, and other people that come in contact with a lot of people can be tested daily or weekly as well. And travelers need tested.
    Masks may help, but as we now know this is airborne and ordinary masks are very limited in addressing that. We could issue everyone N95 masks and hope people are willing and able to wear them properly. But that is looking increasingly unlikely and that boat has probably sailed.

  16. Just know that the current corona vaccine circulating is far more dangerous. The current vaccine is called COVID-19.

  17. Anything that can reduce the transmission factor under 1.0 will get rid of COVID. If the current COVID transmission factor is 1.4 then a 50% effective vaccine would be enough especially since a large portion of the population will already be infected by the time the vaccine is available.

  18. If it is based on a cold, you may have had that cold or those colds before. Then you may fight it off so fast that you would get no immunity. If they tweak it to be a little different than anything that has been seen in the last hundred years, that might work, or they may have just made another deadly virus, though unlikely.
    I like Inovio's approach. They use a Plasmid which is bacteria based (without the actual bacteria just its DNA) rather than virus based. Intuitively that just seems safer to me, but there are probably many safe approaches. And things will be tested. I just want to avoid anything that has been statistically linked with any chronic disease. Particularly, I want to avoid anything based on latent infection viruses or live bacteria with protective exteriors that prevent them from being killed by the normal antibiotics no mater how benign they are assumed to be.

  19. Inovio also received some money, not big money but some. $71milion https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/inovio-receives-71-million-contract-from-us-department-of-defense-to-scale-up-manufacture-of-cellectra-3psp-smart-device-and-procurement-of-cellectra-2000-for-covid-19-dna-vaccine-301081866.html
    It has been down recently, could soon be on its way back up. I bought some shares. 
    I think their vaccine should be a safe, effective, possibly single dose vaccine even if it is not the first to show up. They also don't use a needle, which some people might like. 
    More info: https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/ino-4800-dna-coronavirus-vaccine

  20. At this point I think I'd prefer a live vaccine based off those four "common cold" coronaviruses. Nature has already done the safety testing for that, and I'd be OK with just taking a few days off work to suffer through a bad cold.

    I'll probably take the vaccine they offer anyway, because I'm getting old enough my chances of dying of Covid 19 are starting to creep up, but mostly I'm just hoping that the bureaucratic barriers that got taken down to fight Covid 19 don't get put right back up next year.

  21. Good enough to bring R below 1 if most people get the vaccine in a year since vaccination starts. That, rapid testing and full rapid social tracing for each case found can reduce the epidemic to a few cases here and there. When that is achieved most a restrictions will be lifted so we still have a way to go.

  22. Immunity from medical harm lawsuits for the companies rushing their vaccines out the door without sufficient safety testing dont fill me with any confidence.

  23. They haven't completed the phase 3 trials, then they don't know what the improvement in population resistance is going to be. They are just guessing.

    Or rather, they are trying to prepare the public for disappointing results so that if the Phase 3 results come in and are less than amazing, there won't be a public backlash.

    On the other hand, if the results are fantastic, then nobody will care about this announcement, so they look good either way.

    Have a look at Derek Lowe https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/. He is in the business, he can read the various press releases and published papers, understand what the technical jargon (both scientific and regulatory) actually means, and then translate into English.

    Derek's most recent essay is on exactly this subject. Preparing the public for whatever the trial results might turn out to be.

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