- When will the vaccine be ready?
After the Phase 3 efficacy data is reported, assuming that the data shows that the vaccine prevents COVID or reduces COVID severity. This happens after enough people in the trial get sick with COVID. Then they unblind the groups and see if the people who got sick were in the control group or the vaccinated group. Essentially we are all waiting for a few 10s of people to get COVID. You can guess that the UK, South Africa and Brazil trials are getting very close to this since those trials have been running for months, but the US trial has recently started and is being run separately and wouldn't be very close yet. So the UK would probably have the first chance of approving this vaccine.
- What do we know about vaccine effectiveness so far?
So far, they've published initial safety data and immune response data in both healthy young adults and now in older adults. That all looks good - basically, the vaccine generates a lot of antibodies in everyone who takes it. So in theory, it should work. Separately, other groups have done testing to verify that the vaccine is operating the way it should at a biological level. There were also very early animal tests to show that the vaccine reduced the severity of COVID and prevented serve lung symptoms. In those tests, the vaccine didn't totally prevent transmission, but the animals were injected with a large amount of virus and it's not clear how humans will react in the real world (hence the wait for Phase 3 trail results).
- If it works, how long would immunity last?
No one knows until we wait and find out. But people vaccinated with the experimental SARS-1 vaccine still show antibodies over 10 years later, so the hope is that it could be long lasting.
- Didn't they have to stop this trial at one point because someone got sick?
Actually, at least 3 adverse events have occurred. Early on, one person got symptoms consistent with typical vaccine side effects, but it was determined that the person had a previously undiagnosed, unrelated disease. Second, there was the highly publicized case where a patient suffered temporary spinal inflammation and recovered shortly. It is unclear if this event is related to the vaccine, but trials in all countries have resumed so the various government agencies seem satisfied. Third, a patient in Brazil died of COVID but it was reported that the patient was in the control group and hadn't received the vaccine. Very little information from these cases is reported because of health privacy laws, so some of this information comes from media reports as opposed to official announcements. None of it seems inconsistent with a normal vaccine trial.
- Would you feel comfortable taking it yourself?
Yes, I did (I'm in the trial). No side effects worse than a flu shot personally.