Discussions about coronavirus vaccines from different countries are on the rise
Hanzi Duan
Since the spread of the coronavirus in 2020, many countries are developing vaccines and have entered clinical trials. According to data from the New York Times, there are 74 new coronavirus vaccines in clinical trials all over the world and 21 of them have reached the final stage of testing.
Various countries are stepping up the research and development of vaccines that can effectively protect against the coronavirus. As a result, the discussions and reports on vaccines have also increased sharply. In 2020, the times of the global pharmaceutical companies mentioned in the New York Times has exploded. Among them, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, jointly developed by the United States and Germany showing the effective rate of over 90%, has been mentioned nearly 700 times in 2020.
Same as the Sinopharm in China. It has almost never been mentioned in the New York Times in previous years, but its name has often appeared in the articles last year.
Vaccines on the market all over the world work differently. Among them, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine with the highest effective test result is an mRNA vaccine. Unlike other coronavirus vaccines which inject a weakened or inactivated bacteria into the body to trigger an immune response, mRNA vaccines allow humans to produce a protein or a protein fragment to trigger an immune response. If the real coronavirus enters the body, the immune response that produces antibodies can protect them from infection.
Now the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been approved for use in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E. and Bahrain. Many other countries have also approved the use of this vaccine in emergency situations. However, this vaccine needs to be stored between –25°C and –15°C, which makes it difficult to transport and use the vaccine around the world.
Several vaccines such as Sinopharm, Sinovac and Sinopharm-Wuhan developed by China are inactivated vaccines made from killed pathogens. Its current effective rate is about 79%. Compared with other kinds of vaccines, the immune response induced by the inactivated vaccines is relatively weak. The Sinopharm is currently approved by China, Bahrain and U.A.E. and can be used in emergency in some countries like Peru and Argentina.
However, there are still many undesirable results of vaccination at present. In Japan, five women recently experienced severe allergic reactions after vaccinating the Pfizer. In South Korea, a nurse was still infected after receiving the first dose. But it is still unclear how much the occurrence of these cases is related to the injection of the vaccine.
