Vaccines for Coronavirus 

 

     The Coronavirus has been around for a while now, and vaccines are finally being released. About 25,350 vaccines are expected to be released in Orange County next week. 

     According to ocregister.com, the expected delivery date for the vaccines that are for Orange County is Tuesday, Dec. 15. The first few Coronavirus vaccines for Orange County will go to local hospitals. State officials have decided to do this because they believe that workers at the local hospitals are at high risk of infection and need to take the vaccines to stay safe. Stated in the ocregister.com, “Orange County’s rate of new COVID-19 cases has never been higher and the low supply of intensive care beds among the region’s hospitals has prompted the strictest stay-at-home order since spring.” 

          In scientificamerican.com, it states, “On November 18 Pfizer and partner BioNTech said their vaccine was 95 percent effective at preventing the disease, based on full trial results. Two days earlier Moderna reported its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective, based on interim data.” Both of these drug companies, however, use the same vaccine approach. The vaccine approach that they both use involves messenger RNA molecules. In the same article, scientificamerican.com, they also stated how many doses these drug companies expect to produce. “Pfizer expects to produce up to 50 million doses worldwide in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion in 2021. Moderna intends to manufacture approximately 20 million doses in 2020 and 500 million to one billion in 2021.” Each person who will receive a Coronavirus vaccine will need two doses of it given 28 days apart.

     As stated in the paragraph above, the vaccine approach that the companies both use involves messenger RNA molecules. According to genome.gov, “Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a molecule similar to DNA. Unlike DNA, RNA is single-stranded.” This RNA helps produce proteins to fight viruses. According to stat news.com, these proteins help our bodies produce antibodies to fight off the virus.

     Without a doubt, Orange County will receive vaccines for their civilians and local hospitals. Knowing that vaccines are coming is extremely good news. The world might get better sooner than lots of people probably thought!