COVID-19 proceeds to kill thousands of people around the world. Many are wondering how to get out of lockdown and begin to return to regular life. But this won’t be easy. Without the vaccine of this virus- there is a risk for its spread.
While every country is going through the process of meticulous testing, contact tracing and quarantine rules to constrain the spread of the virus. But the only way to reduce the infected numbers is by providing immunity to people from it. To make this happen, we need 50% of the world population to be immune from the virus so that the other half can’t spread it to them. However, as of now, only 2- 12% of all the people are immune to the virus. Widespread immunity can be accomplished by many people getting infected or by the vaccine. It’s no surprise to imagine the vaccine is the only reliable path to regularity. Below are some facts about how a coronavirus vaccine will help shield us from Covid-19.
Vaccines function as a preparation program for the immune system of the human body by preparing the immune cells to identify and destroy the virus or bacteria that causes disease. When a vaccine is injected into the body, your immune system stimulates a response without making you ill.
So, if you encounter any real disease later, you are protected as the body automatically operates in a way to fight it. So far, covid-19 vaccine development has centred around using the proteins for the vaccine to develop immunity.
A new vaccine introduced by a US-based company claims roughly 95% protection from covid-19. The results came similar to Pfizer’s and led to believe that vaccines can help us to end the pandemic. Both of the companies are using innovative technology and experimental approaches to achieve the target. Moderna will commence with the trials in the next few weeks. However, the central question is yet unanswered.
How good is it?
The trial involved 20,000 people in the US, among them, half were injected with two doses and others with dummy injections, to test the placebo effect. The analysis depends on the first 80 patients with the symptoms. Only ten of the candidates got the actual vaccine whereas the remaining received the dummy injection. The data shows that there were some severe cases of the virus, though none of them was from the people injected with the vaccine.
When will you get it?
That depends on the country you reside in and your age. Moderna planned to apply to the supervisory authority of the US this week. They anticipate around 15 million doses to have in the nation. They projected the volume of one billion vaccines for other countries in the world. The UK announced recently, to have the vaccine for people in this spring, with the eldest people being the priority. But we still don’t know about how long the immunity is going to last for as experiments are still in process. There are rumours that the vaccine works best for the older age group who have the risk of dying due to the virus. The main unanswered question is whether the vaccine stops people becoming sick or it stops the virus from spreading too. All of these questions are going to affect the usage of the vaccine.
