VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford reported that the vaccine developed jointly for the coronavirus has shown 70% average effectiveness in its final trials.  The vaccine can prevent 70% of people infected from coronavirus, even it is up to 90% if given a lower dose.

Deputy Executive President of AstraZeneca, Menelas Pangalos explained that based on the data, the vaccines of AstraZeneca and Oxford University are effective in reducing the number of infections and reducing the spread of the coronavirus.

“It's clearly effective. We’re extremely excited because what the data has shown us says that the vaccine is clearly effective in terms of reducing infections. It’s clearly effective in terms of reducing people getting sick and going to the hospital. It's potentially reducing transmission and I think is a good chance of being a very successful, very effective vaccine and get us back to normal," Pangalos said.

Meanwhile, Chief Executive of AstraZeneca, Pascal Soriot in recent a statement explained that administering the lower dosage from the first trial was a huge extra value because it means that it can vaccinate more people and faster.

This vaccine is very effective when it is given half a dose and followed by a full dose one month later. Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), Soumya Swaminathan mentioned that the results are blissful.

Soumya Swaminathan further said that the big advantage of having this vaccine is that it can be stored, transported, and handled at temperatures of 2-8 degrees Celsius so that it will facilitate the distribution of the vaccine to countries and people anywhere in the world.

“It can be stored in the ordinary refrigerator temperature of two to eight degrees and it's stable at that temperature. That of course has huge logistical advantages for transporting in delivering the vaccine to the cities and towns and villages and rural areas around the world," Swaminathan said.

Besides, when compared to vaccines produced by BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna, which have been proven to be more than 90% effective, the vaccine analyzed by AstraZeneca provides lower effectiveness. However, the result of the preliminary trials is a new breakthrough in fighting against the virus that has killed almost 1.4 million people. (Borgias/AF)