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Re: Coronavirus
Fantastic news on the Oxford/AZ vaccine. Not sure why the focus seems to be on the 70% single dose efficacy and not the 90% 1.5 dose one. Of course, if 70% is sufficient to give herd immunity, then we're getting a much better 'bang for the buck' over multi-dose regimes both in terms of efficiency of use of the material but also in the resources needed to administer the vaccine. It would be interesting to see the single dose efficacy for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
The good wife and I were discussing the various vaccine approaches over the weekend and the deals with various companies is smart not just because we didn't know which vaccines would work but also how they're made. There will almost certainly be bottlenecks in production not just of the vaccines but also their raw materials.
The RNA vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna) use raw materials (nucleotides and enzymes) that will directly compete with the needs for production of COVID RT-PCR test kits. The AZ/Oxford doesn't but, as cell culture is involved, uses other specialised chemicals such as cell culture grade amino acids. Also, the facilities for cell culture are a lot more complex than RNA production.
I know raw materials suppliers are wildly working to expand production of pharmaceutical grade chemicals and equipment to meet these needs
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