TAMPA, Fla. — Just before the new year, the U.S. is headed into a new fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
"I'm surprised we did this fast. I had a pretty good hope and we were gonna do it! Research on coronavirus vaccines has been done for years," infectious disease expert Dr. Jill Roberts said.
The USF doctor isn't the only one excited about Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.
"I originally said that getting a vaccine in 12 to 18 months is very, very optimistic, and that it's never been done before. Now it has, so, you know, I was a little skeptical, but I was wrong. I'm very pleased to be," virologist Dr. Michael Teng said.
The doctors say a COVID-19 vaccine in the tool kit is the next step to getting rising case numbers under control.
"What I'll be interested to see now is the data. As we actually get these various groups vaccinated, what happens in those groups? Do we see a quick decline in cases in health care workers? Do we see a quick decline in cases in long-term care facilities? Obviously, that will have a huge impact on the deaths," Roberts said.
Scientists say the data on how effective mRNA vaccines are against the virus could come out in early spring. About 90-95 percent of the population will need to get the shot to achieve herd immunity.
"What the initial rollout is meant to do is to kind of curb some of the mortality that we're seeing because the residents of long term care facilities really are disproportionately represented in the people who die from COVID related illness. So there's that issue and then we're trying to protect our health care workers," Teng said.
With Moderna on track to get emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration later this week, Teng says the distribution of the shot will need to change.
"When the manufacturing rate starts going up, then we're going to have to find a different logistic way to vaccinate. We can't just have one person sit in a chair with a nurse injecting the vaccine. That's going to have to be a little bit more rapid," Teng said.
The FDA will review data from Moderna's Phase 3 clinical trial on Thursday. Doctors expect possible approval to come down by the end of the week.
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