12% of Americans may not need coronavirus vaccine: US officials
This file photo taken on April 29, 2020 shows an engineer displaying an experimental vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus that was tested at the Quality Control Laboratory at the Sinovac Biotech facilities in Beijing. AFP-Yonhap
By Robert Delaney
A Covid-19 vaccine that the Trump administration hopes will be available by January may not be equally effective for everyone, US officials said on Tuesday.
But, they added, they expect as many as 40 million Americans to have developed coronavirus antibodies by the end of this year, which would lower the population that would need the treatment that officials hope will end the pandemic.
“Operation Warp Speed”, an initiative under the auspices of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in coordination with the Food and Drug Administration, the Defence Department and other federal agencies, has committed nearly US$3 billion to speed development of promising vaccine candidates and build out manufacturing and distribution capacity.
HHS estimates that as many as 12 per cent of the total US population of about 331 million people will not need the inoculation because of previous exposure to the coronavirus, senior Trump administration officials told reporters.
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More than 115,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 and over 2 million have been infected.
“For many reasons we don't expect to have all Americans vaccinated,” an administration official said on Tuesday. “We fully expect there will be, name the number ― 20, 30, 40 million Americans ― that probably have strong antibodies to the coronavirus by the end of the year, so they would be a significantly lower priority.”
“We will not know what the performance, the safety and efficacy, of these vaccines is yet”, he said. “It may be much more applicable to certain demographic categories than others.”
In this March 16, 2020, file photo, Neal Browning receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. AP
The official did not specify which groups might not respond as well to the vaccine or why.
“Our aspiration is very clear that by the height of flu season next year we have enough vaccines, and we have vaccinated those who are vulnerable and desire a vaccine, to protect as much life as possible, and we're confident that we will hit that objective,” the official said.
While the officials expressed confidence, one cautioned that there was no way to guarantee the vaccine initiative's success.
“There are no sure things in science,” he said. “We cannot promise a 100 per cent chance of success. What we can tell Americans is that we've taken every possible step to maximise the probability of success.”
The administration officials spoke on a briefing call on the condition they not be identified.
The initiative is winnowing the number of developing vaccines being supported to seven, “representing the most promising candidates from a range of technology options, which will go through further testing in early-stage clinical trials”, HHS said in a fact sheet.
The mRNA 1273 vaccine candidate by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna, for which the government has earmarked US$483 million, expects to enter third-phase clinical trials next month.
Other front-runners include vaccines under development by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca in conjunction with the University of Oxford.
Health experts have warned that social distancing measures will need to stay in place until an effective vaccine is available globally.