COVID-19 vaccine: Do vaccines need to be 100% effective? Fauci says otherwise

Coronavirus vaccine: Are COVID-19 vaccines developed 100 per cent effective? With COVID-10 pandemic at peak in some countries, having lesser growth rate in some countries and a second wave hitting in many countries, all eyes across the world are set on when the vaccine for Coronavirus will come. However, that is not an only matter of concern. As many vaccines are undergoing phase II and III of human clinical trials, it is yet to be seen how effective they will be once introduced. To this, Anthony Fauci, a top infectious diseases expert in the United States highlighted that in order to fight the pandemic, vaccines need not be 100 per cent effective for bringing the world to normalcy within a year.

In a report by IE citing Fauci, it has been noted that if the vaccines are half effective, in other words, if the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines is only 50 per cent, even then it would be of great help in controlling the viral infection worldwide. For him, the chances of expecting 90 per cent effectiveness from vaccines is less but even if the vaccine developers have made it 50-60 per cent effective, it is a good enough percentage, the report quoted Fauci as saying. This also implies that health authorities should keep practising coming up with public health approaches as vaccine effectiveness is not high.

Fauci believes if vaccines are brought as early as next year, the pandemic across the continents will be controlled, if not completely, it will be enough to bring everything back to how it was in pre-COVID-19 era by the end of 2021. However, he emphasized that this does not mean that Coronavirus will be eliminated completely. It will only reduce the impact to such an extent that it will not interfere with daily lives of people in terms of economy and employment, the report said.

Meanwhile, there are more than 150 vaccines that are currently in pre-trial or clinical trials phases. As many as six vaccines have reached the final stage of human clinical trials (phase III) and are soon expected to be rolled out. In India, eight candidate vaccines are being developed where two vaccine candidates along with Oxford’s Covishield are in the second phase of human clinical trials.