Art Caplan Expects 'Even More' Good COVID-19 Vaccine Announcements

With news that pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has developed a COVID-19 vaccine that may be nearly 90% effective and is easy to transport, medical ethicist Arthur Caplan told Boston Public Radio on Tuesday things are looking good for widespread vaccine distribution.

“We now have at least three, I’m expecting more to come through the pipeline in the coming months,” he said. “We can call this the Goldilocks phenomenon. The AstraZeneca one has the promise of being able to get to places the other ones won’t, including poor parts of the world as well as rural America.”

The AstraZeneca news comes on the immediate heels of Pfizer and Moderna announcing their vaccines both show initial efficacy rates above 90% in late-stage trials, but must be stored in very cold temperatures. They use mRNA technology, which uses genetic material instead of the traditional deactivated virus to prompt an immune response. The AstraZeneca vaccine uses the more traditional method.

Additionally, Caplan said the AstraZeneca vaccine measures transmission rates after receiving the vaccine, where the other two do not.

“The first two vaccines only measured did you get sick, and they actually only measured did you get mild or moderately sick, figuring if that didn’t happen you weren’t going to get seriously ill,” said Caplan. “For the AstraZeneca one they measured did you infect other people as one of the study points.”

The AstraZeneca results are also only initial analysis of late-stage clinical trials.