In a December 5th issue of Fortune, experts expressed concern about the expensive cold chain needed to transport Pfizer and Modena vaccines and the data provided by AstraZeneca. Meanwhile, the upcoming coronavirus vaccine from Chinese pharmaceutical companies may fill the gap in global vaccine supply.
Pfizer and Modena vaccine cold chain transportation is expensive, and it is difficult for low- and middle-income countries to obtain.
The article said that the temperature of Pfizer and Modena’s candidate vaccine needs to be kept below zero during transportation, and this temperature limit will make it difficult for low- and middle-income countries to obtain the vaccine.
Pfizer’s vaccine must be transported at temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius (94 degrees Celsius minus), which is lower than the average winter temperature in Antarctica. Modena’s vaccine needs to be maintained at minus 20 degrees Celsius ( minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit), which is roughly equivalent to the temperature of the home refrigerator.
Bio Farma, an Indonesian state-owned biotechnology company, said that Indonesia was actually unable to buy Pfizer’s vaccine due to the high logistics requirements for storing and distributing vaccines.
AstraZeneca vaccine effectiveness questioned
On November 23, AstraZeneca announced the results of its COVID-19 vaccine trial developed in cooperation with Oxford University, with an average efficacy of 70%, and a half dose of vaccination can reach 90%.
According to AstraZeneca, a total of 2,741 people received a one and a half dose of the program, with an efficiency of 90%, while 8,895 volunteers received the two doses of the program, with an efficiency of only 62%. The average validity of 70% is obtained by combining these two sets of data.
But the next day, AstraZeneca revealed that the one and a half dose of the plan was a pure mistake, and the researchers initially wrongly gave the first group of volunteers half a dose of vaccine.
After the disclosure of the mistakes in AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial, the scientific community raised widespread doubts about AstraZeneca’s research results. Some experts believe that the lack of transparency in some key aspects of the test data and the relatively small sample size of the one and a half dose group is difficult to explain whether the figure of 90% validity is a real result or an accidental deviation. They suspect that there may be a “significant loophole” in the data.
AstraZeneca and Oxford University finally announced that they would conduct an additional round of research trials on the vaccine to verify the effectiveness of a half-dose solution.
Chinese vaccine may fill the gap in global vaccine supply.
AstraZeneca’s plight and restrictions on shipping and distribution of Pfizer and Modena vaccines will be a gap in global vaccine supply, which Chinese vaccines may fill, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior researcher on global health issues at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.
China’s two major vaccine manufacturers, China Pharmaceutical Group and Kexing Biotechnology, are currently conducting phase III clinical trials of three candidate vaccines, which can be distributed without a cold chain.
Huang Yanzhong said that China’s vaccine candidate will be extremely attractive to low- and middle-income countries, especially those unable to afford or maintain cold chain distribution of vaccines.
In addition, Fortune magazine reported that the vaccine in the United States will focus mainly on domestic trials in the United States, but China is conducting clinical trials in many countries around the world.
Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia have reached an agreement with Kochen Bio to buy tens of millions of doses of vaccine if the phase III trial is successful.
At present, two inactivated vaccines, the Beijing Institute of Biological Products and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, affiliated to China Biotechnology Group, are conducting phase III clinical trials in the United Arab Emirates, Paris, Jordan, Peru, Argentina, Egypt and other countries. At present, more than 50,000 people have been vaccinated, covering 125 samples.
Nationality, progress in various aspects is widely recognized internationally. Dozens of countries have now submitted the demand for a coronavirus vaccine to the Chinese pharmaceutical group China Biotechnology.
Nicholas Thomas, a vaccine research expert at the City University of Hong Kong, believes that the Chinese Medicine Group has established a huge distribution system and the system has been stress tested, which will also be a major advantage of the Chinese Medicine Group in the future distribution.
