Intelligence Squared

The world had been waiting for the news and on November 9 it finally came: a vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech had proved to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in clinical trials. And then just a week later another pharmaceutical company, Moderna, announced the results of its own clinical trials. Moderna’s vaccine showed a remarkable 95% efficacy in preventing Covid-19. With further promising results from the Oxford/AstraZenica vaccine showing between 70 – 90% protection, many policymakers now believe we are on track for a mass rollout of multiple vaccines in 2021 and a chance of normality resuming within months. But how realistic is this? And what questions still need to be answered? Many experts are warning that, while the news about vaccines is an encouraging episode in the pandemic story, it is by no means the end of it. We have many ethical and logistical challenges ahead of us in the coming months. The chief scientist behind the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, Uğur Şahin, has said we are