Written by Azella Lafever (News Writer)
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started healthcare workers and scientists have been working tirelessly to find either a cure or a vaccine for COVID-19. Usually it requires years of research and testing before a vaccine reaches hospitals. But since COVID-19 has killed around 1.5 million people worldwide scientists are rushing to produce a safe and effective vaccine as fast as possible.
Pfizer and it’s partner BioNTech have just released news on a vaccine they have created and they have published their first results in November. This vaccine has been proven to be 95% effective, this vaccine is given in two doses three weeks apart. The immunity is built up in about 4 weeks after the vaccine was given.
About 42,000 people were involved in the vaccination process about half got the experimental vaccine and the other half were placed on placebo. The results were about 170 people got sick with COVID-19 but only 8 of them were those who got the vaccine. 162 people received the placebo so only about 5% of the cases were in the group of people who received the vaccine.
This vaccine must be stored at a temperature around -70C and has to be transported in a special box packed in dry ice and is installed with a global positioning system so the vaccines can be tracked to make sure they all reach where they are supposed to go. Each vaccine is sent to a destination and would carry about 5,000 doses. If the boxes are unopened the vaccine has ten days to reach the actual vaccine center. Then the vaccine can be stored for up to 5 days in a fridge.
The scientists have been working very hard and on finding a vaccine and there are many other vaccines being made and tested. Currently Britain started its mass vaccination effect as of December 8 and the United States is not that far behind. This new vaccine is like a firehose. It is ninety five percent effective, but currently there are about 200000 new cases per day worldwide and at the vaccine’s current distributing pace there would still be about 10 million more Americans who would have contracted the virus and about 160000 estimated deaths. The vaccine will help this pandemic die down a little but in no way will it immediately fix everything right away. But the first delivery of vaccinations will come in a batch of about 100 million vaccine doses to the United States.
The Claw 