DR MAXWELL ADEYEMI

The quest to get citizens vaccinated against the deadly covid19 virus has been met with some degree of resistance across the country and in many countries of the world. Many people are hesitant owing to many reasons which may range from religious beliefs, conspiracy theories, fears of the unknown, anti-vaxxer activities, and some just due to lack of accurate information and at times ignorance. Unfortunately, some are also due to blind followership of certain religious or community leaders.

Vaccine made too quickly

Much has been said about the vaccine technologies and how the vaccines were produced, many are erroneously following the narratives that the vaccines were hurriedly produced within a year and therefore cannot be safe.

The truth is that the technologies to make different types of vaccines have existed for many decades, many are continuously being tweaked and enhanced to improve them. The killed (inactivated) vaccine technology used to make Sinophram has been developed and used for about 70 years, the viral vector technology used for AstraZeneca has been in use for over 30 years. The protein particle or subunit technology by which the Cuban vaccine Abdala was developed has been around for about 50 years, while the mRNA technology the Pfizer and Moderna employed to make their vaccines has been developed for over 20 years.

In the process of making vaccines, three factors are vital: money to produce the vaccine, sharing of information across geographical regions and patient availability to do clinical trials. These factors will naturally slow down the pace at which vaccines are produced hence the school of thought that vaccines should take considerable length of time to produce. However, in the case of the covid vaccines, many governments and agencies pumped money into the search to get a vaccine due to the devastating nature of the pandemic.

Information sharing was much faster owing to present-day technology of sharing ideas as these can be achieved in minutes, and patient availability was in excess as millions of people were infected daily such that it was easy to get volunteers in real time for clinical trials. Since the technologies were already in place, many years of researches have tested the process. It was then easy to fit in the process with the missing links and expedite vaccine production. This is similar to the advent of cell phones, media platforms and apps. These pieces of technologies have been in existence for years, researched, fine-tuned, enhanced and modified over the past decade, and that has led to the boom in media and communication we all now enjoy with such degree of sophistication today.

Emergency authorisation

On the issue of emergency authorization, many people are led into confusion as to the meaning of this term.

Emergency use authorization is done with every drug or medications, and vaccines.

An emergency use authorization is a mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of medical countermeasures including vaccines and