Coronavirus vaccine: Oxford-Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine is winning praises, but here's why we should refrain from building false hopes

The world over rejoiced when data from Oxford University-British Swedish firm AstraZeneca's phase I/II study of their novel COVID-19 vaccine was released a fortnight ago. The group was one of the first ones to kickstart clinical trials in late April, and ever since, a lot more developments have been taking place.

While the vaccine is still undergoing phase III of its trials, preliminary results from the observatory data confirmed that the vaccine elicits a strong immune response in the host bodies and gave encouraging results. AstraZeneca also announced plans to speed up production to meet the promise of delivering a billion doses. However, not everybody's impressed. WHO, in its latest briefing praised the move but said that it still is unrealistic to have a vaccine deployed before early months of 2021.

While we did have a lot of important takeaways from the data, there remain some broad safety concerns. Will we really have a vaccine ready before 2020?

The data published in the scientific journal, The Lancet showed that participants who were administered a double dosage of the vaccine show strong immune response and spiked up production of antibodies to fight against the infection. However, it still remains unclear as to how long will the vaccine be able to provide immunity against the infection, with experts saying that coronavirus might remain here for decades to come. Earlier reports also pointed to evidence that the vaccine may only be able to provide immunity for a year's time. A separate study by King's College, London also observed that the level of antibodies may fall in patients temporarily immune to the infection.

Early-stage evidence may have shown encouraging results but there's one doubt which remains- lab results do not always correlate to real-world results. All the vaccines under development right now are new, and there's not a lot of evidence we know about the novel coronavirus. What may work in the lab may not actually work with a crowd of seven billion people. The vaccine is also not also one-size-fits-all. It may be possible that if the vaccine works for a small group, it might not work for everyone.

The same concerns were raised when researchers started pre-clinical studies on monkeys, exposing them to a higher load of viruses than humans would generally be. There's still a lot more research which is needed before we consider this novel vaccine as the holy grail for all of our ailments.

The data has been inferred from phase I/II of the clinical trials, which involved a small pool of candidates, wherein half was administered the dosage and half were given a placebo drug. It is still far-fetched to think that a vaccine which was tested on a small batch of volunteers will work on everyone. The first phase of testing is done to root out safety and efficacy problems. The data made available right now is still minuscule to peg it ahead of other vaccines. Other groups, including Moderna, Pfizer and CanSino Biologics have also released data from early-stage trials.

There's another concern which cloud observatory data- is the vaccine capable of working on everyone or not.

In the early phase of the study, healthy volunteers between the ages of 18-55 were selected to be dosed with the vaccine. Pregnant women, those with pre-existing medical conditions and elderlies were excluded from the trial. The study also excluded participants from diverse backgrounds. There were early reports of the vaccine being tested on children as well, but we don't know much about that. For a vaccine to be deemed truly effective and safe, candidates from a broad population, including those belonging to the high-risk category have to be tested too. Hence, it is too early to fully rely on clinical results from this phase of the study.

The University of Oxford has been working on MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) diseases from a long time. The new strain of coronavirus belongs to the same family. As soon as the cases of COVID-19 started increasing they immediately jumped into the fray to develop a vaccine. This gave it a lead time over other vaccine producers.

AstraZeneca has signed pacts with several vaccine producers globally to ramp up production facilities to meet the demand. In a recent briefing, WHO head noted the progress made by several companies but said that it would be still unrealistic to expect a vaccine before 2021.

"We're making good progress...Realistically it is going to be the first part of next year before we start seeing people getting vaccinated,"

However, a lot more study is needed before we consider this fact- how affordable the vaccine will be, will it reach all people and whether everyone will have fair access to it. These concerns have to be taken care of as well.

Remember, we should be treating the vaccine as just another approach to fight the pandemic, not the best approach. A lot more measures and non-pharmaceutical interventions are the key to restraining the spread of the virus.