New possibilities: The Vaccines

ReiThera, Moderna, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax, Pfizer, Biocad: Here are some names of well-known companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector, which in this last period are helping us to fight our global battle against covid-19. COVID‐19 presents an enormous global challenge that has required unprecedented levels of intervention. As we've all come to know during this last year, covid-19 is a highly- infectious virus that has various symptoms, ranging from the most common ones like fever and cough, to more serious and rare symptoms that will require the patient to be intubated with oxygen masks. What not all of us might know, is why the vaccine for covid has been developed in so little time, and are thus worried that it might not be safe.

What's a vaccination?

Vaccination is a simple, safe, and effective way of protecting people against harmful diseases, before they come into contact with them. It uses your body's natural defenses to build resistance to specific infections and makes your immune system stronger. Vaccines train your immune system to create antibodies, just as it does when it's exposed to a disease. However, because vaccines contain only killed or weakened forms of germs like viruses or bacteria, they do not cause the disease or put you at risk of its complications. Most vaccines are given by an injection, but some are given orally or sprayed into the nose.

Their role during the covid

During the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination continues to be critically important. The pandemic has caused a decline in the number of children receiving routine immunizations, which could lead to an increase in illness and death from preventable diseases. WHO (World Health Organization) has urged countries to ensure that essential immunization and health services continue, despite the challenges posed by COVID-19. These vaccines are being developed using a diverse range of delivery platforms, including DNA and RNA, self‐amplifying RNA, virus‐like particle, peptide, viral vector, recombinant protein, live attenuated virus and inactivated virus.

Another perspective

There is something that we all have to admit, we are all skeptical of Russia and tend to stereotype it as a crooked nation whose science develops through questionable methods. We may have been influenced by the rumors that arose during the Cold War or by the countless american movies depicting them as the bad guys but during this pandemic one thing was found out: the first recorded vaccine against Coronavirus in the world was Sputnik V, the Russian one, is one of the most effective. This vaccine ranks among the top 10 candidates nearing the end of clinical trials and the start of mass production on the World Health Organization list. The National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology named after N.F. Gamaleya from the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation (Gamaleya Center) and the Russian Fund for Direct Investments have announced very positive results. While studies initially demonstrated 91.4% efficacy of this vaccine after 28 days of the first dose, the scientists later found with the second interim analysis that Sputnik V is 95% effective 42 days after the first dose. The uniqueness of the Russian vaccine lies precisely in the use of two different human adenoviral vectors which, the Russian scientists explain, would allow a stronger and longer-term immune response than vaccines that use the same vector for two doses. In practice, this process completely eliminates the possibility of contracting the infection following vaccination and at the same time causes a stable immune response in the body. Another interesting aspect, according to the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, is the cost of this vaccine. "The Gamaleya Center has developed one of the most efficient coronavirus vaccines in the world with an efficacy rate of over 90% and a price that is twice as low as other vaccines with a similar efficacy rate."Humankind has made so much progress in bending nature to our will that we sometimes forget our own place in it. The history of pandemics shows that the proverbial fourth horseman of the apocalypse - pestilence - can never be vanquished, only contained. Throughout history, nothing has killed more human beings than infectious disease. Covid-19 shows how vulnerable we remain and how we can avoid similar pandemics in the future.

Francesco Civitelli Benso, Siria Gemali e Andrea Zanghieri 3As