The first delivery of a potential COVID-19 vaccine is expected in Malta as early as December if ongoing late-stage trials are successful, virologist Chris Barbara has revealed.
Barbara said the vaccine would first be administered to vulnerable people and frontliners, before being rolled out to the rest of the community.
He was speaking as part of an interview with Times of Malta as Monday marked six months since the island recorded its first case of the virus, when a 12-year-old Italian girl was confirmed positive.
Since then, there have been 2,076 cases from 203,777 tests and 14 people have died.
Last month, Health Minister Chris Fearne announced that Malta would be “one of the first countries” to receive a COVID-19 vaccine that could start to be produced in the coming weeks, with 330,000 doses already allocated to the country and 500,000 on order.
He said Malta would be among the first to protect vulnerable people and frontliners, with more doses acquired later for the entire population.
Barbara said: “Come December, the first delivery of the new COVID vaccine is expected. This will be administered to vulnerable persons and frontliners immediately, then offered to the community.”
Malta had spearheaded an initiative for the fair distribution of the inoculation, fearing, as far back as February, the possibility of the larger countries monopolising vaccine supplies and leaving smaller ones without early access.
The December timeframe comes as the World Health Organisation said on Friday it did not expect “widespread immunisation” against the novel coronavirus until mid-2021, despite growing expectations that a vaccine could be released within weeks.
Across the world, governments are hoping to announce a vaccine very soon and roll out treatments for COVID-19, which has killed nearly 870,000 people and infected over 26 million.
Under normal procedures, test administrators must wait months and even years to verify that vaccine candidates are safe and efficacious.
But as the pandemic continues to take its toll, there has been pressure to roll out a vaccine quickly.
Malta and other EU states will acquire the vaccine from AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company, which is partnering with Britain’s Oxford University. The vaccine is one of the most advanced: it is on phase three of the clinical trials and is being tested on 30,000 people.
Barbara, clinical chairman at Mater Dei’s Pathology Department, said he expected that by the time Malta marks a year of the virus, the country would have “struggled” through the seasonal influenza infections and would be dealing with fewer COVID-19 infections.
He said an “exceptional” number of quadrivalent influenza vaccines have been purchased this year to protect as many people as possible, and these will soon start to be delivered.
The public is strongly advised to take up the offer to get vaccinated against influenza, Barbara said, particularly now that other respiratory viruses, including COVID-19, are causing infections.
“The dislike of the influenza vaccine among some Maltese is not warranted and the protection the vaccine provides is extremely important,” he stressed.
Looking back on the first six months of dealing with the virus, Barbara said that virologists had learned the importance of strict mitigation measures. A spike in infections in July was partially blamed on mass gatherings, which have since been banned.
“If social distancing is practised by all, we would not be exposed to the mist of droplets shed by infected people, which is much higher when they are shouting and singing,” he said.
“We have also learned much more about how the virus spreads. While, initially, it was advocated that wearing masks could be more dangerous than advantageous, today, it is established that, if appropriately worn, they minimise spread.”
Barbara pointed to a false sense of security that developed after the first few months but refused to be “pessimistic” when asked where Malta had gone wrong, in hindsight.
After the pandemic first hit in March, the virus was “controlled” for many weeks, but it managed to find its way back due to the influx of infected passengers when the various ports were reopened in July, he outlined.
Barbara says he is concerned not only about the 14 people who died from COVID-19.
Deaths from other medical and surgical conditions occurred outside hospital care because people were so afraid of getting infected by the virus that they did not seek medical attention and possible hospitalisation, he said.