Promising news about COVID-19 vaccines continues with AstraZeneca announcing today their vaccine is up to 90 percent effective.
Distributing this vaccine will be a massive undertaking once it gets approval.
Local doctors say they’re cautiously optimistic about a coronavirus vaccine coming, possibly by the end of the year.
Now, discussions are well underway about what distributing it will look like.
“The vaccine will go to major healthcare organizations and they will vaccinate the frontline healthcare workers. If decisions are made to vaccinate emergency management, EMS things like that, those you may have to work with other healthcare resources,” said Dr. Jennifer Morse, Medical Director for DHD #10 and the Central & Mid-Michigan District Health Departments.
Hospitals say the logistical questions include everything from who will administer the vaccine and what needs to be done to store it.
“Obviously with the Pfizer vaccine storage is a big deal because it has to be stored at extremely cold temperature and if you don’t have the proper storage unit for it the vaccine is not going to work because it will get deactivated, so that’s number one, we have to make sure we have proper storage units for it at Spectrum Health that won’t be an issue for us,” said Dr. Liam Sullivan, Infectious Disease Specialist with Spectrum Healthcare
But any vaccine is still several months from being widely available to the public.
“I’m very encouraged, the data looks great, the efficacy or how effective the vaccine is looks really, really good, I mean 95 percent effective, we dream about having vaccines that are over 90 percent effective,” said Sullivan.
Doctors say until a vaccine becomes widely available, things like masks and social distancing are some of the best tools to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
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