As I see it | Covid-19 vaccines are on the way. But making them compulsory will only backfire
- Transparency is the best way to counter public mistrust and misinformation spread by anti-vaxxers
- It may be too early to say whether the 95 per cent efficacy rates reported for some drugs will last
The United Kingdom began its Covid-19 vaccination programme on Tuesday, the first Western country to do so, but with many parts of the world, including Hong Kong, likely to follow, a debate has started about whether to make the jabs mandatory.
Advocates of mandatory vaccination may not be aware of what type of authorisation has been given to the vaccine used in the UK, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and what we know so far.
British regulators granted emergency use licensing last week, allowing the health authorities to start inoculating high-risk groups.
The authorisation is in accordance with the interim results of the final clinical trials – which showed an impressive 95 per cent efficacy rate – but these findings are based on less than four months of data.
Scientists are uncertain if the efficacy rates will decrease over time, a concern that also applies to vaccines developed by Moderna and Oxford University/AstraZeneca. No efficacy data has yet been provided for the vaccines developed in China.
Nor have the trials finished. Vaccine developers typically monitor two years’ safety data, but currently scientists only know what happened two months after people were given the second shot.
