The report by a multidisciplinary group organized by the Royal Society called Delve (Data Evaluation and Learning for Voral Epidemics) states that there are serious challenges to vaccine production. For example, obstacles in manufacturing and storage, doubts about the effectiveness of vaccines, to public trust.
Professor Nilay Shah, head of the chemical engineering department at Imperial College London and author of the report explains, although the vaccine is predicted to be ready for March 2021, the question that is often raised by the public is whether the vaccine is proven effective and able to pass the regulatory process?
“Even if we can create a Covid-19 vaccine and market it to the public, what is often forgotten is the time to distribute it which will be very long, about a year,” he said, according to The Guardian report.
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Professor Charles Bangham, chair of immunology at Imperial College London who is a co-author of the study, emphasized that even if the Covid-19 vaccine is proven to be effective, the normal life that everyone hopes will not be able to get once the vaccine begins.
“Even if the vaccine is declared effective, there is very little chance that we can live a normal life as before the pandemic,” he said. There will be a sliding scale even after the introduction of the vaccine to the public.
He took an example of existing vaccines. Some vaccines have been shown to block infection and even reduce the severity of the disease and the likelihood of passing it on. However, what happened to the Covid-19 vaccine, there are still many questions that researchers cannot answer.
This is related to researchers’ concerns about the Covid-19 vaccine which is thought to be less effective in older adults than other groups. This is a problem because this group is considered to be the most at risk of infection. The effectiveness that is still in doubt will make it difficult to create herd immunity in the community.
Speaking of distribution when the vaccine is ready, Prof. Shah explained that the availability of the Covid-19 vaccine must be 10 times faster than the usual flu vaccine. “Therefore, it will take thousands of health workers, people specially trained to distribute vaccines,” he said.
Meanwhile, public confidence in vaccines could also be a hurdle. Dr Zania Stamataki, a viral immunology researcher at the University of Birmingham, explained that when the first vaccine came out, researchers needed to dispel the myths in society about vaccines and convince people to want to be vaccinated.
“Our big task will also be a matter of convincing the public that it is safe for them to vaccinate, because the Covid-19 vaccine has been tested. Ensuring the safety of the community to be vaccinated is a tough task,” said Dr. Stamataki.
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