[Goose]

As to distribution, although the cold chain is much more logistically challenging, the "last mile", getting vaccine into deltoid, is something that we do have a lot of experience with using annual flu shots.  About 40% of the country's population gets an annual influenza vaccine over the course of about 4 months (October through January).  COVID-19 vaccination is more complicated (cold storage requirement, two doses required), but this is not something entirely new.


BC

The storage requirement isn't entirely new, but it does place a major constraint on administration. The effective shelf life of the vaccines is much shorter than the shelf life of the flu vaccine. Even more importantly, flu vaccine isn't a "limited resource", at least not usually. You can get pretty much all you want. That is a critical difference. We can't allow any significant quantity of this vaccine to expire and not get used. We also need to vaccinate more than 40% of the population to stop this thing. As BC has pointed out, if we get vaccines that are technologically more similar to flu vaccines we can manufacture oceans of it easily and store it in refrigerators for 9-12 months. Unfortunately we aren't there yet.

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I just looked on the web for results of trials of the Sinovac vaccine. Lost of phase 1 and 2 stuff early on and then something approaching silence. Any insight on this board on where this vaccine actually stands? I know there is lots of concern about its genesis, but it would be nice to know if it actually is safe and actually effective. At a minimum, we need to know if we can "count" people who have received it as relatively safe from spreading COVID-19.

[Goose]

As to distribution, although the cold chain is much more logistically challenging, the "last mile", getting vaccine into deltoid, is something that we do have a lot of experience with using annual flu shots.  About 40% of the country's population gets an annual influenza vaccine over the course of about 4 months (October through January).  COVID-19 vaccination is more complicated (cold storage requirement, two doses required), but this is not something entirely new.


BC

The storage requirement isn't entirely new, but it does place a major constraint on administration. The effective shelf life of the vaccines is much shorter than the shelf life of the flu vaccine. Even more importantly, flu vaccine isn't a "limited resource", at least not usually. You can get pretty much all you want. That is a critical difference. We can't allow any significant quantity of this vaccine to expire and not get used. We also need to vaccinate more than 40% of the population to stop this thing. As BC has pointed out, if we get vaccines that are technologically more similar to flu vaccines we can manufacture oceans of it easily and store it in refrigerators for 9-12 months. Unfortunately we aren't there yet.

---

I just looked on the web for results of trials of the Sinovac vaccine. Lost of phase 1 and 2 stuff early on and then something approaching silence. Any insight on this board on where this vaccine actually stands? I know there is lots of concern about its genesis, but it would be nice to know if it actually is safe and actually effective. At a minimum, we need to know if we can "count" people who have received it as relatively safe from spreading COVID-19.