Is DeWine prepared to distribute a COVID vaccine when it’s ready?

Medical experts say the majority of the population will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order for it to work.

The vaccine hasn’t even been released yet and already the pro-vaccine drive is underway.

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said that to stop the spread of this disease and “get our lives back,” most of the population will need vaccinated.

With several potential COVID-19 vaccines now in clinical trials, policymakers need to plan for the next hurdle: Ensuring Americans actually get vaccinated, said an article in USNews on Tuesday.

Could the vaccine, like the mask, eventually become mandatory if not enough people voluntarily receive it?

Monica Schoch-Spana, Hopkin’s senior scientist made the case for why the vaccine should be embraced by all.

“But it’s one thing to make a clinically successful vaccine,” said Schoch-Spana, “It’s another to make it socially acceptable.”

The vaccination is not only about yourself, both Offit and Scch-Spana stressed. It’s about creating the ‘herd immunity’ that protects the most vulnerable people in a community.

Most of the population will need vaccinated to “stop the spread of this disease and get our lives back,” said Offit.

It is also becoming apparent that the vaccine might not be a single-dose, but a two-dose injection that could require boosters.

Vaccines will likely need to be given in two doses, Offit said. And whether or not booster shots will be needed to ensure continued immunity against the virus remains to be seen.

Around the world, governments are investing in stockpiles of hundreds of millions of doses of the different vaccine candidates, in hopes of speedily starting inoculations if any are proven to work, according to the Associated Press.

“We’re not going to get this virus under control until either we get a vaccine or it infects 80% or 90% of the population, and the latter is an outcome we don’t want because a lot more people will die,” said infectious disease researcher Sarah George, MD. in Popular Science.

We believe that these findings, although preliminary, suggest that many people who hold anti-vaccine beliefs may jeopardize the effectiveness of a COVID-19 vaccine once it’s available, due to issues of noncompliance, said an  article in The Conversation.

The government’s top infectious diseases specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress that vaccine trials were looking favorable and a vaccine could be available by the end of the year.

An experimental vaccine, developed by Fauci’s colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., is undergoing testing.

Researchers reported on Tuesday that the vaccine provided the hoped-for immune boost. The vaccine requires two doses, a month apart.

“No matter how you slice this, this is good news,” Fauci told The Associated Press.

“We’re going to start manufacturing doses of vaccine way before we even know that they work, so that by the beginning of 2021, we will have a couple of million doses,” Fauci said.

Fauci said he’s somewhat concerned about how long a vaccine might contineu working. Natural immunity to coronaviruses that cause common colds often lasts less than a year, he noted.

While trials prepare a vaccine for the general population, states need to begin thinking about how they will implement a vaccination policy, so it is effective enough to reopen…and stay open.