Rabat, Morocco — A North African country, Morocco is preparing to vaccinate 80% of the adults in their country with the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine that has not been officially proven safe and effective yet.
A Health Ministry official from Morocco informed that the country is expecting to get their first batch of Chinese Covid-19 vaccine, which has proven to be 86% effective, within a couple of days.
The priority in vaccinating the first batch of the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine will go to medical staff and other front-line workers, as well as the elderly similarly as the other countries. Morocco’s government informed that they hope to vaccinate 80% of its adults, or 25 million people, as soon as the vaccines get approved by domestic regulators.
While the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine has still not completed its advanced trials that confirms that the vaccine is safe, according to scientific journal The Lancet, the first trial including of 144 people and the second trial of 600 people proves that the vaccine was “suitable for emergency use”.
Although the World Health Organization warned that the new vaccines should first be tested before inoculation in tens of thousands of people to be sure if it works and to avoid worrisome side effects, the U.N. health agency informed that the countries can individually decide to use the vaccine if there is an emergency.
At present, Morocco is battling a surge in the number of confirmed cases as the country confirms approximately over 3,000 Covid-19 cases and 50 deaths per day.
At present, two effective Covid-19 vaccines have submitted their vaccine for emergency approval to the Food and Drug Administration of United States. They are US biotech firm Moderna Inc and the pharmaceutical corporation, Pfizer and their German partner BioNTech. These two vaccines are currently at the top of the Covid-19 vaccine race.
While the Moderna vaccine is expected to be checked by the Food and Drug Administration of United States on December 17, their vaccine has proven to be 100% effective at preventing severe Covid-19 and 94% at preventing the disease more broadly in their Phase 3 clinical trial with 30,000 participants.
On the other hand, the vaccine of Pfizer has proven to be only 95% effective and 94% effective for the volunteers who were over the age of 65, however, as the side effects of this vaccine is at a minimum as well, the White House vaccine chief, Moncef Slaoui stated that it is likely to be given approval on the second week of December.
Moderna seems to have an upper hand in the vaccine competition than Pfizer as the effectiveness rate of Moderna is higher than Pfizer and since the Moderna vaccine does not require heavy storage requirements unlike Pfizer.
Nevertheless, as both of the vaccines have a considerably high effectiveness rate, they are likely to be given approval for emergency use during December and according to White House vaccine chief, Moncef Slaoui, they will start giving out the vaccine to first Americans the next day of its approval.Related
