Ten COVID-19 vaccines are now in their final trial stages, RÚV reports. All of the vaccinations have performed well in trials, but furthest along in its testing is the vaccine that is being developed by Swedish-British pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca. Iceland is among the countries that have already made arrangements to buy vaccines from Astra Zeneca when it is ready for use and distribution.
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Per international agreements that have been put in place regarding COVID-19 vaccination distribution, all nations that are part of COVAX, an international collaboration to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination, will promptly receive enough shots to vaccinate 20% of their populations.
“They’ll need to prioritize who they’ll start with,” explained Ingileif Jónsdóttir, a professor specializing in allergies at the University of Iceland who also works at deCODE Genetics. The rest of the countries’ populations will be vaccinated in a later phase. “One of the conditions of being a member of COVAX is accepting that it won’t be one or two countries that get everything first…[T]here are 74 countries that have been determined to be poor or of average wealth. This is being done in order to ensure that as far as it’s possible, people can’t pay to push to the front of the queue. That won’t serve anyone,” said Ingileif.
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Ensuring that less wealthy countries receive proportional amounts of the vaccine at an affordable price is indeed a priority. “There is also a requirement that each dose costs no more than $3, which is really low,” continued Ingileif. “If we have a lot of countries where there is no protection [against the virus], then the other countries will be just as exposed as before.”
Asked about possible side effects or complications that could arise from being vaccinated against COVID-19, Ingileif pointed to other vaccines against viruses that have been safely used by millions of people for decades. Side effects from vaccination are extremely rare, she said, and not serious.
“It’s maybe one in 500,000 or one in a million people [who have serious side effects from vaccination], while the diseases that these vaccinations prevent were perhaps causing 10% of deaths and having other serious consequences. So if you compare the results of vaccination and are preventing mass deaths…the risk is infinitesimal,” Ingileif concluded.
