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Rewind to December 2019 when everything was perfectly normal; families were gearing up for Christmas, people were hanging out leisurely at the malls, with me personally hibernating in the sheets (life of a student). COVID-19 then ripped through our lives like havoc and the world was on the verge of falling apart… eerily resembling the beginning of the end.

Where do we stand now exactly one year after? Could the COVID-19 vaccine be our messiah? What does this mean and what does this entail?

How are vaccines approved and distributed?

Once a vaccine has been established safe for human use, it is still nonetheless a long way from global distribution. Essentially, vaccines undergo extensive and thorough clinical trials prior to approval by a health agency as well as the receiving country; an expensive process that traditionally takes a decade or two to complete. This is mainly due to the fact that clinical trials are conducted in 3 intense phases to ensure the safety and efficacy of such a vaccine before the general public can be inoculated. 

Phase 1 of the trial calls for a dozen or so volunteers to receive the vaccine, with the objective of the trial to see if any antibodies are produced in response to administration which would be correlated with the first step of success. Phase 2 is identical in which the vaccine is administered with a similar objective, but only with a larger group of volunteers. If all works well, phase 3 proceeds and begins with the administration of the vaccine to a group of 30k to 60k volunteers with added objectives to observe if volunteers are actually protected from the disease and to identify the less common side effects of the vaccine.

Special considerations are given in the event of a public health emergency that calls for the manufacturing and approval process to be expedited, such as is the case of COVID-19. This is achieved through a collaboration of international efforts with the intention of developing a treatment plan and a fully-functional vaccine. It is impertinent to note that a delay of a mere few hours can detain disease eradication by months and skyrocket mortality rates around the world should there be yet another wave of infections. 

Once the vaccine has been approved by a health agency, it is ready for public inoculation. Although vaccines are constantly still under surveillance post-approval, and can be monitored via systems like the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and many others. 

How do these vaccines work?

It is important to first understand that a vaccine is used to train a body’s immune system to recognise the “disease-causing” part of a virus, which usually consists of weakened viruses or a purified signature protein of the virus: both of which are not harmful in normal circumstances. The aim of vaccines is to ultimately elicit an adequate immune response in which the inoculated host’s immune system learns to recognise and start destroying pathogens without the risk of getting infected – effectively providing protection from future ‘real’ infections.

Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine is the one leading this race against time with an efficacy of 95% (meaning that out of one hundred people exposed to coronavirus, 95 of them will not be infected), with Moderna’s vaccine coming in second with an efficacy rate of 94.5%. Both of these are a type of mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccine, which is a relatively new biotechnology. Another vaccine in the running is Oxford-Astrazeneca’s vaccine; a more traditional vaccine which utilises the weakened version of the virus, and has an efficacy of up to 90% (although this has yet to be confirmed).

All three Pfizer/BioNTech’s, Moderna’s and Oxford-Astrozaneca’s vaccines have a dual dose requirement, spaced out a few weeks apart. A dual dose calls for an increased efficacy and effectiveness of 95% as opposed to having a single dose which amounts to 50% only. 

So what about Malaysia?

Malaysia has signed a contract with Pfizer/BioNTech for 12.8 million doses of the vaccine due to arrive in the first quarter of 2021, becoming the first Southeast Asian country to strike a deal with the conglomerate companies. While final trial data is promising as aforementioned, Asian countries remain vigilant and cautious on it being as effective as it could be in colder climates due to the tropical heat present, alongside the required -70 degree celsius storage for this range of vaccines. However, the vaccine can be kept in a cool fridge for up to 5 days or a thermal shipping box for up to 15 days, a rather well-to-do alternative to relieve such tensions.

 Pfizer will distribute the vaccines in stages, delivering the first 1 million in the first quarter of 2021, followed by 1.7 million, 5.8 million and 4.3 million in subsequent quarters of the year – all of which the Malaysian government will be distributing for free. 

Malaysia is also taking part in a phase 3 trial of Beijing’s inactivated SARS-CoV vaccine, involving some 3000 participants from eight hospitals supervisioned under the Ministry of Health. This decision was made following the success of phases 1 and 2 of the inactivated vaccine by the Institute of Medical Biology Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (IMBCAMS) – potentially promising some prospects of the efficacy of the vaccine when distributed to Malaysia’s large population. A study review was initiated on the 10th of December to explore the law and research ethics in place of this clinical trial, permitting the study to begin sometime in the end of December or early January 2021 post-approval. 

How is Malaysia going to distribute the vaccine?
Vaccines will be set to distribute on a high-risk priority basis according to Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, with “frontliners, senior citizens, and those with non-communicable diseases” at the top of the list. 

What does this mean for Malaysians abroad?
Each country has different regulations, and Malaysians abroad ought to contact their respective Malaysian embassies for more information. 

Quelling conspiracy theories and doubts: 

• The vaccine consists of the lungs of male aborted foetuses.
  On November 15, a Facebook video broadcasted live showed an excerpt of the packaging for Oxford-Astrozeneca detailing its contents, one of it being MRC-5. The video then pans to a Wikipedia page where the user points out that MRC-5 cell line is “originally developed from lung tissue of a 14-week-old aborted Caucasian male fetus”, asserting that the contents of this vaccine “definitely has the lung tissue of a 14-week-old aborted Caucasian male foetus.” 

This is not true and has been confirmed by Reuters. The study of this vaccine (particularly in this context) was led by an independent group of scientists at the University of Bristol to test the efficacy of the Oxford-Astrozeneca’s vaccine prior to human trials, and to do so needed a human cell line to document the results; i.e. the MCR-5 cell line. This is ultimately not the same as having the MCR-5 cell line as an ingredient in the final product of the vaccine. 

Bill Gates is going to use microchip implants to fight coronavirus and subsequently track us.
As Bill Gates’s foundation has donated millions to the research and development of a COVID-19 vaccine, it is not surprising that conspiracy enthusiasts around the world believe that his contributions may also serve an ulterior motive. A viral post on social media claimed that Bill Gates “will launch human-implantable capsules that have digital certificates which can show who has been tested for the coronavirus and who has been vaccinated against it”. Most of these posts draw their information from Biohackinfo News, claiming that the microchip implants resonate with the mark of the beast which is a religious correlation to the antichrist which would spark and derail the world to the beginning of the end-times.

This is also not true as confirmed by Reuters, having retraced the source of this whole kerfuffle from the discourse between Gates and a redditor that was misinterpreted. The Reddit exchange is as seen below.

Gates’s mention of digital certificates in no way pointed in the direction of mass microchip implantation, but rather the presence of a large-scale health record that can be updated when a person has been vaccinated in an effort to create a COVID-free environment.