Q&A: What you need to know about the Covid-19 vaccine
A medical staff member prepares a Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at The Vaccination Hub at Croydon University Hospital, London, on the first day of the largest immunisation programme in the UK's history. Ireland is set to receive doses of the vaccine in January.
Ireland has agreements with five vaccine companies, including an agreement for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine which has been rolled out in the North. The agreement covers 2.3m doses of the vaccine, with each person needing two shots.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine were developed using a new technology called messenger-RNA. It is injected into the arm, with a gap of three to four weeks between each dose.
“It is absolutely impossible to get the virus from the vaccine," said Dr Anne Moore of UCC School of Biochemistry. "It is an instruction, a piece of genetic code. It is completely separate from the virus, it is just teaching the immune system to produce this particular protein and respond against it.”
Pfizer said in a statement that it takes 28 days from the first dose to be fully effective. Trials showed these vaccines dramatically reduce the chances of developing Covid-19 symptoms and decrease the severity of the illness if you do get sick.
“It is absolutely critical for this vaccine that people get the second dose, you will not be protected with a single vaccination, it is unlikely as your immune response will not be high enough after the first vaccination,” said Dr Moore.
We are already used to an annual flu vaccine, while a vaccine against Hepatitis A lasts up to 10 years. However, it is not yet known how long these new vaccines last.
“We know nothing," said Dr Moore. "The durability of the vaccine is driven by the vaccine platform and RNA is pretty new, the coronavirus is new so that is a double whammy. We can’t predict.”
In London, a subsidiary of Irish pharma company Open Orphan is supporting an exciting project called the Human Challenge Programme which will test this. They are planning to work with vaccinated volunteers and expose them in a safe way to the virus.
Unfortunately, not yet.
“We won’t get back to normal life straight away," said Dr Edel McNeela from the School of Science at Waterford Institute of Technology. "I think masks and social distancing will be still part of our norm for a while.”
This is because we now know the vaccines available can prevent people getting severely ill with the virus, but we do not yet know how effective they are in preventing transmission.
“We know the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have shown very high efficacy against disease but we don't know yet if the vaccines prevent all infection as trials did not look at asymptomatic infections and if they prevent virus transmission,” said Dr McNeela.
And as we know that up to one in five people infected with the virus does not have any symptoms, the need for caution remains.
Early to mid-January is the expectation for this. The European Medicines Agency has to sign off on the vaccine before it can be generally administered in Ireland. It is expected this sign-off will come at the end of the month, with preparation already under way for the distribution and storage of the vaccine in Ireland.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has outlined the sequencing order for the vaccine distribution.
Under the plan, those over the age of 65 who are residents in long-term care facilities will be the first sequence, with frontline healthcare workers who are in direct contact with patients the second. That will be followed by those aged over 70, beginning with those aged over 85 and working down in bands of five years.
The minister has also announced that there "should be no barrier to people accessing a vaccine" and, therefore, the vaccine will be available free of charge to everyone.
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