Are these US only numbers? 600M sounds like very very few doses given worldwide population and even western world population.
Which is why people are so keen on getting more vaccines approved (in the US and abroad). Pfizer is targeting 1.3B doses manufactured in 2021, 600M from Moderna, which still leaves the world plenty short (remember each person needs 2 doses). It's a group effort, and there are additional vaccines under development/review that will hopefully contribute to the effort.
There's also discussion around whether Moderna's vaccine can be reduced from 100ml to 50ml while retaining the same efficacy, which would obviously double the amount of doses provided by Moderna.
That's not quite true. You need 2 for full effectiveness, but it's not like missing the second dose leaves you with no benefit at all. In fact, it's far from clear, from a global perspective, that having twice as many people with less-than-full-effectiveness would not better than half as many people with full effectiveness.
Seems clear from my perspective. Two doses are recommend by manufacturers. Anything more or less is pure speculation at best. Why speculate in absence of a way to test your hypothesis?
Yes, two doses are almost certainly better than one. But those are not the choices.
When there are far fewer doses than the number of people to vaccinate, the question is if it's better to give N people 2 shots, or 2N people 1 shot.
The test data looks like 1 dose gives ~80% protection vs ~95% for 2 doses. The 2x80% scenario is clearly better than 1x95%.
And, of course, everyone would get the second dose as soon as production catches up.
There are two lines of evidence. The first is empirical. It It appears that one dose of Moderna _is_ highly effective, perhaps 85% or more. Note the treatment-control divergence after about fourteen days [1]. The second is theoretical. From our ample medical experience with other vaccines, there is strong prior reason to think that one dose is likely to work well, and that a second shot in the distant future would be even better than a second shot after three or four weeks. Booster shots are given a.) as backup for people who don't seroconvert after one dose b.) to trigger a secondary immune response. In light of a.), we shouldn't be surprised by the 85% number (most people seroconvert; there's no partial immunity, you either seroconvert or you don't). In light of b.), we should be very skeptical of the four week interval, especially since the secondary response takes about two weeks to develop. It's shorter than the interval for every other vaccine.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/fda-releases-data-on... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...
Anyone got any solid insight into this?
> “My concern, as a virologist, is that if you wanted to make a vaccine-resistant strain, what you would do is to build a cohort of partially immunized individuals in the teeth of a highly prevalent viral infection,” Bieniasz told STAT. Even rolling out the vaccine at all when there is so much transmission occurring is far from ideal, he said, suggesting it would have been safer to beat down the amount of virus in circulation before beginning the vaccine deployment.
>“You are essentially maximizing the opportunity for the virus to learn about the human immune system. Learn about antibodies. Learn how to evade them,” he said.
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/04/britain-takes-a-gamble-w...
The EUA is their attempt to manage the health risk to the population - an investigational vaccine using an entirely unproven novel technology stack poses some unbound risk (likely small), vs the benefit of an effective vaccine. Once we change the dosage, the effectiveness also become unclear, while the risk remains (eg, potential trace contamination with precursors in the lipid carriers triggering shock in a untested population subset. Perhaps prescription statins greatly reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine, etc etc). It's the job of the FDA to err on the side of caution and see risks where we would not. I agree with you that the situation is unprecedented, but I also do not blame the FDA for only working with the data they have. I suspect that Pfizer & Moderna will conduct Phase IV trials with different dosage regimes based on which the FDA can modify the terms of the EUA.
https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/04/britain-takes-a-gamble-w...
That the impact could be huge doesn't take much imagination: We could be back to square 1 with the vaccination process and the evolved virus might be more dangerous.
SinoVac Planned to have capacity for 600 million doses/yr in China by the end of 2020, with more production in Indonesia, Brazil, and India.
Russian Sputnik V also will have several hundred million dose production.
It is quite likely this will already surpass our ability to administer the vaccines or the willingness of people to take them.
Pfizer projects making more than that.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has much larger production, and the J&J vaccine will also, if it is approved.
Is there any reason why more labs across the globe couldn't start producing the vaccines, under a license from those companies? Is the technology needed to create them so unique that it literally can't be made anywhere else?
There are many genuine complaints about the vaccine ramp up, but this is one of the few cases where these numbers are a "good job".
This is why its so important for the FDA to give EUA to Astrazeneca now, that is a technology that can be scaled quickly. They should also encourage a readout now of J&J, which is almost certainly over the efficacy threshold and can also be scaled. With these two approvals, we can have enough vaccine for a 1st dose for everyone within the next 60 days.
The PR and marketing is not targeting the US for some reason, maybe because they think no one will want a "Russian" vaccine in the US or maybe because it's more expensive... but in other countries it's going to be "the" vaccine, so I hope it works.
Edit: the Oxford AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines are adenovirus and are nearing completion of their trials, so we are on track for much wider availability.
We're amazingly lucky in the developed world and U.S. in particular. Wealth makes it possible to buy up all the supplies (which, reportedly, the U.S. has done) and make sure your people get first in line for it. This is also why the U.S. is both idolized and hated in much of the world.
I think you are implying "no"? A "yes" would imply "in addition to those doses there are many more doses being produced for other countries".
> 600M sounds like very very few doses given worldwide population and even western world population.