The race to place Covid vaccine orders

Researcher Aissatou Aicha Sow, a member of the Canadian Virological Society, reveals in The Conversation that Canada has, in addition to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, "signed six other contracts with Moderna, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, AstraZeneca and Medicago."

The Northern American country has also reserved 56 million more doses from Pfizer-BioNTech, in addition to the 20 million it had already bought, totalling 76 million.

  414 million doses

It has also, according to The Conversation, secured access to 414 million doses from different sources.

The UK government with its 40 million order of the two-dose treatment, intends to treat 20 million people. The first to be targeted will be healthcare workers followed by the elderly.

Israel on the other hand has ordered eight million doses, according the Times of Israel. Quoting the Prime Minister, the paper reported that the country "will receive enough doses to inoculate four million Israelis".

The deal was signed with Pfizer.

The cost of the doses ranged from $3 (Sh330) to $37 (Sh4,000)  per dose.

The race for the vaccine is clearly on in earnest and according to WHO, no less than 202 firms are in it, with 47 already in the human trial phases.

Leading firms

The leading firms in this frantic search for the vaccine globally so far are Pfizer, BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson and Oxford University, Moderna, Astrazeneca, Sanofi GlaxoSmithKline, Novavax, Medicago and a host of others who will most likely come to the fore once they reach an advanced stage.

So far, the collaboration between US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech is the one being hailed most as a "breakthrough, giving birth to hope and optimism".

The fact that it provides 90 per cent efficacy is cause for both joy and skepticism. But then the full advanced data involving subjects, ages and other details has not been released yet as the firms await regulatory approvals.

Here's what Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and leading US infectious diseases physician said when asked whether he would take it: "I would not only take it but would recommend it for my family. 70 per cent efficacy would have been good enough for me". He was speaking in an interview with MSNBC.

Treating severe cases

Yesterday Moderna announced its vaccine, co-developed with Fauci's institute, had proved 95 per cent effective against Covid-19, including treating severe cases. The US biotechnology firm also said its vaccine remained stable at standard refrigerator temperatures.

Vaccines normally take years to work on, test and re-retest before regulatory approval is sought and granted, but the disaster Covid-19 has posed globally is causing most of these stages to be hastened, causing major concern to some in scientific circles.

Although the other firms in the vaccine race are insisting theirs is not-for-profit, especially Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, Pfizer and BioTech stand to make a lot of money from their vaccine.

Estimates of how much they will rake in worldwide are in the range of $13 billion, according to the US investment bank Morgan Stanley and cited in The Guardian. But then Pfizer did not take advantage of research funds from the US government but instead pumped close to US $2 billion into its work.

And that's why they gently told off the Trump administration's Covid taskforce led by VP Mike Pence when the latter tried to take credit for their work.

 Tomorrow: The challenge of home-based care