How COVID-19 vaccines were developed: safety and efficacy

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The process of developing vaccines against COVID-19 still raises many questions and misunderstandings. Is it possible to develop a safe vaccine against a virus that has caused a pandemic and millions of deaths worldwide in one year? Before we find out how the vaccine against COVID-19 was developed, let’s go back in time a hundred years. In 1918, humanity experienced a flu pandemic – the “Spanish”. Only that no one knew that it was a virus, since the causative agent would be isolated as early as 1933. How much time has passed, and flu continues to be studied to this day. Viruses are dealt with by a separate science – virology. Since 1965, scientists have known and studied coronaviruses – a family of respiratory viruses that can infect both humans and some animals and birds. For several decades, researchers have learned how to decipher coronaviruses – currently this process is already much faster, easier and cheaper. Therefore, we learned about the causative agent of COVID-19 quite quickly – we deciphered it, and already at the end of January 2020, a lot was known about it. Read also: How to check if the vaccine has not spoiled? Explanation of the Ministry of Health In order to create a vaccine in the modern world, you need to know the causative agent. Scientists were able to discover it in such a short time precisely because of the fact that they conducted research and accumulated knowledge in previous years. In addition, the world is developing very rapidly. We have changed knowledge about vaccines, requirements for their study, production technology, and we already have the practice of using various vaccines. Over the past 50 years, there have been many breakthroughs in the development of science and medicine. For example, mRNA technology began to be studied in the 1970s. Thanks to this, Ukrainians were able to get vaccinated with drugs produced by Pfizer or Moderna. Around the same time, the active study of vector technologies that formed the basis of vaccines such as AstraZeneca began. The successful experience of using this very technology against Ebola was several years before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. That is, to create vaccines against COVID-19, scientists resorted to technologies that were already known, studied and improved for a long time. Indeed, the duration of the research phases was revised. It should be taken into account that the world was in the conditions of a pandemic, and not all people would be able to live to the end of the standard duration of the phases, i.e. wait several years. Instead, vaccines have saved many lives. But what was the reason to start vaccination, having intermediate research results? First of all, in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, a very large number of people are sick, and this allows scientists to very quickly accumulate material in order to analyze the effectiveness of developments. Let’s imagine that there would be no pandemic: there are not so many sick people in the world every day, and only one case a week. In this case, in order to check how effectively vaccines work and protect, scientists would have to wait until a sufficient number of patients for research accumulates in one group, where everyone was vaccinated, and in the other group – where they were not. Instead, 30-40 thousand participants is a very large number, which allows us to obtain reliable results in a short period of time. If, in the absence of a pandemic, 2,000 participants had participated in the research, they would have had to be observed for several years. That is, it was possible to reduce the duration of the research also due to the large number of participants. So, what should you pay attention to in order to make sure that the vaccination against COVID-19 is safe? First of all, vaccines have been used for more than a decade, meanwhile science is progressing. Secondly, we have already used many of the technologies for immunization against other diseases. For example, the production of viral or protein vaccines. The technologies themselves, which formed the basis of the creation of mRNA and vector vaccines, have been studied for more than one decade. Thirdly, scientists have a theoretical basis and an understanding of which consequences can be from the vaccine and which are not. Fourth, severe allergic reactions can indeed occur, but they usually appear within 30 minutes. Studies show that, in general, such a reaction occurs no more than to vaccines against other diseases. It is also important to understand that scientists were able to develop vaccines against COVID-19 in record time thanks to large investments and cooperation of many countries. Developments were carried out in compliance with strict standards based on the principles of evidence-based medicine. As statistics show, vaccinations have already saved many lives. That is why it is important to maintain your immunity and get a booster dose of vaccination against COVID-19. Fyodor Lapiy, pediatric infectious disease doctor, associate professor of the Department of Pediatrics, Immunology, Infectious and Rare Diseases of the International European University, head of the National Technical Group of Experts on Immunoprophylaxis, especially for UP. Life Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.

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