In the quest for a vaccine to fight Covid-19, the pandemic that tore the year to shreds, there has been a lot of positive news. Hope now seems a prospect, with reports from Pfizer-Bio N Tech and Moderna reporting that their vaccines have 90 and 94.5 percent effectiveness, respectively, even when the final stages of trials continue.
The Russians reported that their Sputnik-V vaccine confers 92 percent effectiveness, but these claims have less audience. Elsewhere, several other vaccine candidates, including India's COVAXIN, developed by Bharat Biotech, are nearing the final stages of their development. At least one vaccine, if not more, will appear to have been launched on the market by early 2021.
That said we need to balance our excitement somewhat, as most vaccines so far need extremely super-cold chain transport requirements. To be stable, the Pfizer vaccine requires temperatures below -80 degrees centigrade, the Moderna one, a very cold but slightly more reasonable -20C.
Such a cold-chain vaccine delivery system will be difficult to manage, particularly in a country of the size of India, but it could be assumed that tougher vaccines will be developed that will be managed by India's existing cold-chain infrastructure for fish, meat and vegetables.
However, even if such a vaccine is produced reasonably soon, it should be noted that it may take many months to immunise most Indians residing in large metropolitan areas, even if we reap the benefits of companies such as the Serum Institute.
Producing and deploying more than a billion doses of vaccine safely, even if supply chains assist with patents and manufacturing, could take years. And according to some virologists, getting the immunisation out there as early as possible will significantly accelerate the process of herd immunity.
It is not shocking that stock exchanges across the world have been on the uptrend. Yet after a year of gloom and doom, just a bit of good news is enough to rock the markets. And don't make a mistake, all these findings are very positive. But we'd have to be careful until we get the nitty-gritty of precisely how the vaccine is going to be administered.
