Here is what you need to know about the four vaccines that could arrive in Hungary soon

Another American pharmaceutical company, Moderna announced successful coronavirus vaccine tests with particularly high, about 94.5 % efficiency. There are now three vaccines on the word that their producers claim to be efficient: the vaccine of Pfizer-BioNtech, of Moderna and the Russian Szputnyik V. Plus the European Union also started negotiations on CureVac’s vaccine – so four different vaccines could be available in Hungary.

In the second half of December or beginning of January, four vaccines could arrive in Hungary at the same time. Learning from the experience of the first wave, the Hungarian government does not want to depend only on one supplier but wants to have more options for Hungary – since the purchasing of protective equipment and ventilators showed that the EU’s solutions are not always the best and fastest. Here are the similarities and differences between the four vaccines, compared by Origo.

According to the World Health Organisation, there are more than a hundred vaccines in the world that’s development is in the clinical phase. For Hungary, the most important are Pfizer and Szputnyik V, because these could arrive first. But experts also have high hopes about the American Moderna, the German CureVac and the Brit AstraZeneca vaccines.

The most important similarities and differences between the vaccines

Based on the results of the clinical tests, Moderna showed the best efficiency rate so far. The American company is already in a late phase in clinical testing, and according to their report, their vaccine provokes immune responses in 94.5 %. Moreover, they will most likely be authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before the end of the year. Pfizer published their results a week ago – their vaccine was proven to be 90 % efficient during clinical testing. Szputnyik V proved 92 % efficiency. AstraZeneca will announce their results before December.

The EU has concluded an arrangement with Pfizer on ordering 300 million doses of vaccines and member states can then decide how much they need. Still, there is also an arrangement with AstraZeneca and CureVac. However, since this will not be enough for all the countries, it is important for the Hungarian government to negotiate with other partners, too.

According to Katalin Karikó – who contributed to the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines – Pfizer vaccines’ mRNS codes the virus’ spike protein, so the vaccinated person first produces the protein from the mRNS himself and then the body is able to react to danger on its own, and produces not only the virus protein but also the antibodies. Since a group of immune cells survives as remembering cells, the immunity will be lasting – she explained to Ripost.

The science behind it…

RNS stands for ribonucleic acid from which ribose is the sugar. On the other hand, DNS stands for deoxyribonucleic acid and accordingly, deoxyribose is part of the sugar in the nucleotides that build it up. In DNS as well as in RNS, nucleotides only differ in their bases. In biochemistry, the process where an RNS-copy is made of a specific part of the DNS is called transcription. The produced RNSs could be classified to different groups, including mRNSs (messenger RNSs) that’s nucleotide sequence serves as a base for producing proteins’ amino acid sequences.