At least 11 SARS CoV2 vaccines are under development by 9 manufacturers. Five of these vaccines are in Phase III Trials. You can Click here to access the New York Times Coronavirus vaccine tracker for more information.
-
About half the candidate vaccines require 2 doses. Vaccines with 2 doses significantly complicate deployment because they require that folks that have been vaccinated return for the 2nd dose, usually within a tight timeframe.
-
Several of the vaccines require ultra-low cold storage (-70c). Stringent cold chain requirements like this can cause real challenges in putting together vaccination campaigns. Interestingly, the CDC is not recommending that vaccinators buy special freezers. The CDC Vaccine Storage and Handling Toolkit provides additional information about the cold storage for the various vaccines.
-
Arizona County Health Departments are busy mapping high priority populations who will be eligible to receive the initial doses including healthcare practitioners, healthcare support workers, and first responders. Counties are generally aligning their plans with the National Academy of Medicine’s preliminary framework for COVID 19 vaccine prioritization.
-
In the event that the vaccines are made available under an emergency use authorization (rather than regular FDA approval), providers may need a clear informed consent agreement to ensure that patients fully understand that it is an EUA vaccine.
-
We urge vaccine manufacturers to seek full approval of their vaccines rather than Emergency Use Authorization before deploying their vaccine to the public because public confidence that the vaccine is both safe and effective is critical. Our previous blog explains the process.
Last week, HHS released their strategy for the public distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. The release provides a distribution overview along with an interim playbook for state and local public health programs and their partners on how to plan and operationalize COVID-19 vaccination response within respective jurisdictions.
I didn’t have time to review the HHS report before putting this out, so I’ll loop back next week on that.
