SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) - While distribution might be slower than expected, several additional vaccines are moving forward in the pipeline.
“This is incredible, it's incredible, this has never happened in the history of the world,” Dr. George Rutherford said.
UC San Francisco infectious disease epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford is talking about the speed, less than a year, in which scientists have come up with a vaccine to fight the coronavirus.
“This is the fruits of all that investment made in molecular biology in the last several decades,” Dr. Rutherford said.
With the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines already being distributed and regulators awaiting proof of how effective AstraZeneca’s vaccine actually is, drugmaker Novavax is moving into final-stage testing with its vaccine.
Dr. Rutherford says the vaccines that are effective, the quicker we can reach herd immunity and some normalcy.
“Let say we get 10% vaccinated by the end of January, another 10% by February, and so on, then by the end of July we could pushing upwards of 70% so that would be seriously good,” Dr. Rutherford said.
The recent discovery is a new strain of COVID-19 in the U.K. is cause for concern, but medical experts s say it's not surprising.
“Viruses mutate all the time, that’s what they do, all biological systems mutate all the time, RNA viruses especially,” Dr. Rutherford said.
Dr. Rutherford says the good news is the piece of the virus the vaccines are attacking, the spike protein appears to be constant across these strains which suggest the vaccines will continue to work.
Of course, there has to be more study of the strains and on the effectiveness of the vaccines against the strains but so far, medical experts say things seem to be moving in the right direction.
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