In the last few days, Pfizer BioNTech a German-US company, and the US company Moderna have separately announced that that the COVID-19 vaccines they have been developing have proved ninety-five per cent effective. Both subsequently said that they will now apply to regulators to manufacture and roll out the vaccines.
The two were among the 48 candidate vaccines worldwide which the World Health Organisation (WHO) report as being at various stages of development using different approaches to defeating the virus. There are also in development, being trialled, or already in limited use, several bio-pharma products that enable many patients seriously ill with COVID-19 to recover.
The announcements and others expected shortly are a sign of hope. They raise the obvious questions as to which countries will have early access to the vaccine; the extent to which money and vaccine nationalism will determine how whatever is available will be distributed; and how the Caribbean, a region already suffering economic hardship as a consequence of the pandemic, will fare in the global competition to obtain access?
