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“So very quickly, we start to have over 150 million doses per month in March, April, May,” he added. He and other federal officials said the general public could likely be vaccinated by May or June.
The road to a coronavirus vaccine
Words to know about vaccines
Confused by all the technical terms used to describe how vaccines work and are studied? Let us help you:
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- Adverse event: A health problem that arises in volunteers during a clinical trial of a vaccine or drug. An adverse event is not always caused by the treatment tested in the trial.
- Antibody: A protein produced by the immune system that can attach to a pathogen such as coronavirus and prevent it from infecting cells.
- Emergency use approval, license and authorization: Medicines, vaccines and medical devices cannot be sold in the United States without winning approval of the Food and Drug Administration, also known as license to practice. After a company submits clinical trial results to the FDA for review, the agency decides whether the product is safe and effective, a process that typically takes several months. If the country is faced with an emergency – such as a pandemic – a business can request a emergency use authorization, which can be granted much faster.
- Background rate: How often a health problem, called an adverse event, occurs in the general population. To determine whether a vaccine or drug is safe, researchers compare the rate of adverse events in a trial to the baseline rate.
- Efficiency: A measure of the effectiveness of a treatment in a clinical trial. To test a vaccine against the coronavirus, for example, researchers compare the number of people in the vaccinated and placebo groups who receive Covid-19. The actual effectiveness of a vaccine may be different from its effectiveness in a trial.
- Phase 1, 2 and 3 trials: Clinical trials generally take place in three stages. Phase 1 trials typically involve a few dozen people and are designed to observe whether a vaccine or drug is safe. Phase 2 trials, involving hundreds of people, allow researchers to try different doses and gather more measurements of the vaccine’s effects on the immune system. Phase 3 trials, involving thousands or tens of thousands of volunteers, determine the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine or drug while waiting to see how many people are protected from the disease they are supposed to be fighting for.
- Placebo: A substance with no therapeutic effect, often used in a clinical trial. To see if a vaccine can prevent Covid-19, for example, researchers can inject half of their volunteers with the vaccine, while the other half are given a saltwater placebo. They can then compare the number of people in each group infected.
- Post-market surveillance: The follow-up that takes place after the approval of a vaccine or drug and which is regularly prescribed by doctors. This monitoring usually confirms that the treatment is safe. On rare occasions, it detects side effects in certain groups of people that have been missed in clinical trials.
- Preclinical research: Studies that take place before a clinical trial begins, typically involving experiments where a treatment is tested in cells or in animals.
- Viral vector vaccines: A type of vaccine that uses a harmless virus to introduce immune system boosting ingredients into the human body. Viral vectors are used in several experimental Covid-19 vaccines, including those developed by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Both companies use a cold virus called adenovirus as a vector. The adenovirus carries coronavirus genes.
- Test protocol: A series of procedures to be performed during a clinical trial.
The CDC panel was originally not supposed to vote on its recommendations until the FDA approved a vaccine. But that has delayed the timeline for giving more advice to states as they complete their distribution plans, which are due to be submitted to the CDC on Friday.
On Tuesday, the group specifically suggested that within the long-term care population, residents of nursing homes, who tend to be the most frail and most susceptible to Covid, should receive the first vaccines just in case. where there wouldn’t be enough, as well as with staff who haven’t had the virus in the past 90 days.
Within the much broader category of health workers, the panel said health systems should consider prioritizing those who have direct contact with patients and their families and those who handle infectious materials. Dr Nancy Messonnier, who heads the CDC’s National Center for Vaccination and Respiratory Disease, told the panel that, based on her recent conversations with state health officials, most states and big cities “think they can immunize all their health workers within three weeks. . “
But achieving that goal depends on how much vaccine they get and how quickly. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear told reporters on Monday his state had more than 200,000 health workers but would only receive 38,000 doses on his first shipment and may not receive another for two weeks.
Long-term care facilities include nursing homes, with approximately 1.3 million residents; assisted living facilities, with 800,000 residents; and residential care facilities, which tend to be small and cater for specific populations. The federal government has contracted with CVS and Walgreens to deliver vaccines to most of these facilities across the country, with teams of pharmacists making three visits to each to ensure every staff member and resident receives both an initial injection and a booster injection several weeks later.
Several members of the group insisted that small community doctor’s offices not be excluded from the initial priority list. “Transmission dynamics suggest that providers who treat patients earlier in their illness may be at higher risk,” said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, a member of the public health group in Seattle and County. King in Washington.
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