A nurse in New York City was one of the first Americans to receive an initial dose of the COVID-19 vaccine Monday morning, according to USA Today. “I feel hopeful today,” said Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse at New York’s Long Island Jewish Medical Center, after she received the shot. Healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities are prioritized to be inoculated first, in accordance with a recommendation made at the beginning of the month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Department of Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar told CNBC on Tuesday that most Americans can expect to get the vaccine as soon as late February. He noted that he doesn’t know how many Americans have been vaccinated against the coronavirus so far, but those figures should arrive in the coming days. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization for the first SARS-CoV-2 vaccine on Friday evening after a 22-member advisory panel approved its use. The FDA is poised to approve Moderna’s vaccine this Friday, according to the The New York Times. A review committee is scheduled to meet on December 17 to discuss the use of Moderna’s vaccine for the prevention of the virus. Distribution of about six million doses of the Moderna vaccine could begin next week.
Study Results Show About 95 Percent Efficacy
The federal health agency released data on Tuesday showing that the Moderna vaccine had an efficacy rate of 94.1 percent. Last week, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee gave its okay for the two-dose Pfizer-BionNTech vaccine candidate (BNT162b2) based on a review of phase 3 study results showing that it was 95 percent effective in protecting against SARS-CoV-2 infection. The FDA posted documents confirming that the first dose cuts the risk of getting COVID-19 by half and the second dose provides nearly full protection. With one abstaining, the members voted 17-4 that the known benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks of getting the shot in adults 16 years and older. Ofer Levy, MD, PhD, a panel member and the director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, said in The Wall Street Journal, “When you have 2,000 to 3,000 people a day — a day — dying of coronavirus, to me this was a clear choice.” Archana Chatterjee, MD, PhD, a member of the FDA panel, explained on CNN that she voted against the recommendation because data so far support its “use in adults 18 years and older,” but not with “younger participants where I felt like the data was limited.”
On the Lookout for Side Effects
The United Kingdom has already begun inoculati ng patients after green-lighting the vaccine on December 2. Canada, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia have followed suit with approvals and are moving ahead with nationwide immunization plans. While research has shown that adverse reactions are rare, Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has warned that two people reported severe adverse reactions on the first day of vaccinations. The British health agency stated that “any person with a history of a significant allergic reaction to a vaccine, medicine, or food (such as previous history of anaphylactoid reaction or those who have been advised to carry an adrenaline auto-injector) should not receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.” In its meeting last week, the advisory panel emphasized that the FDA will actively monitor the use of the vaccine to track side effects and gauge the duration of immunity provided by the inoculation.
The First Vaccines Are Based on Genetic Technology
Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were created using mRNA technology, which stimulates the body’s immune system by using a genetic molecule called RNA (ribonucleic acid). RNA is similar to DNA and plays various vital biological roles, including the regulation and expression of genes. The University of Cambridge explains that an RNA vaccine works by introducing an mRNA sequence (the molecule that tells cells what to build) into the body. The mRNA sequence is coded for specific molecular structures on the surface of a virus, called antigens. The genetic coding instructs human cells to produce components of the targeted virus (which can’t cause infection like the actual virus), and these components stimulate a person’s immune response. Richard Kuhn, PhD, a professor of science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the director of the Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology, and Infectious Disease, speaks in more depth about mRNA technology in the Everyday Health podcast Track the Vax. With the United States and the world beleaguered by a virus that has overwhelmed hospitals and now taken more than 300,000 American lives, the vaccines are a welcome weapon in the fight to end the pandemic. As Rishi Seth, MD, an internal-medicine physician with Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota, told The New York Times, “You’re still fighting a battle, but you’re starting to see the horizon.”
