The Fate of the Second, Third, and Later Covid Vaccines in Jeopardy
(Thursday, December 3, 2020]​
With the news of two vaccines likely getting authorization in the next week or two, volunteers for other vaccine trials are getting scant. In a news this week, several volunteers in the control groups in other vaccine trials expressed interest to get the approved vaccines as soon as they become available. This could make completing the ongoing trials hard and almost impossible to recruit volunteers for the bigger trials, particularly in places where the new vaccines become available. Internationally accepted ethical rules would not permit withholding an approved vaccine from volunteers or giving people placebo in that scenario. There are few scenarios that may permit completing the ongoing studies. The authorized vaccines are expected to be in limited supplies at least for the next few months, giving the ongoing trials a limited window to offer an investigational treatment. Also, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require ultra-low storage and shipping, so a vaccine that can be stored at higher temperatures may be somewhat attractive for new users. The later vaccines may be less expensive. However, all those excuses to test an experimental vaccine are closing fast. It is hard to imagine scenarios where the demand for the Covid vaccines will not be met by the authorized vaccines, in the US, within the next 6 months which is the timelines for the next vaccines in the pipeline to be ready for authorization. If the first two vaccines confirm 90% and higher protection, as indicated by the preliminary data, in the larger populations, competing vaccines will be harder to develop as the margin for improvement would great shrink. There is real risk that all the later vaccines may never get fully developed simply because the first 2 vaccines simply closed the market for everyone else.