‘Immunizations are speeding towards approval before clinical trials end, but scientists say this could complicate efforts to study long-term effects...
‘Once a vaccine is granted emergency approval, there is pressure on developers to offer the immunization to trial participants who received a placebo. But if too many people cross over to the vaccine group, the companies might not have enough data to establish long-term outcomes, such as safety, how long vaccine protection lasts and whether the jab prevents infection or just the disease.
“It’s a real vaccine-development dilemma,” says Klaus Stöhr, who formerly headed vaccine design at the pharmaceutical company Novartis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is now retired. Still, Stöhr thinks that the vaccine should be granted emergency-use authorization, because its effectiveness has been established and there is a dire need.’
Read here (Nature, Nov 23, 2020)
