Some of the residents of Wuhan who arrived at Gimpo Airport by charter flight from Wuhan City, China, the origin of the new coronavirus infection, on the morning of January 31, last year, are being transferred to the National Medical Center in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul. Reporter Hwang Jin-hwan-After the first corona19 confirmed in Korea on January 20 last year, the’war’ with the Corona 19 virus has been continuing for a year.
As of the morning of the 31st of last month, the number of cumulative corona19 cases around the world exceeded 83 million and the death toll exceeded 1.8 million. It is the result of being helpless in front of the Corona 19 virus, which was called’pneumonia’ and’monstering’ at the beginning of the outbreak and was unclear.
However, in the course of a year’s struggle, humanity also had’three kinds of defense weapons’. Vaccines, treatments, and quarantine.
It is expected that the path of the’post corona’ will be determined depending on whether the’three kinds of weapons’ will play their role in the new year, which is in the second year of the Corona 19 incident.
◇ Will vaccines be silver bullets?
yunhap news-The vaccine is being discussed first as a’silver bullet’ (a special drug) that will calm the Corona 19 situation. Unlike past infectious disease vaccines, which required a development period of at least 5 years, the Corona 19 vaccine was developed rapidly in about a year and has recently been approved by health authorities in each country.
Representative vaccines include the US’s Modena and Pfizer’s vaccine and the UK’s AstraZeneca’s vaccine. As of the 25th of last month, the Pfizer vaccine was approved for emergency use in eight countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and the Modena vaccine was approved for emergency use in the United States, and the AstraZeneca vaccine was approved for emergency use in the United Kingdom.
In Korea, five products, including Genexine’s’GX-19′, are undergoing initial clinical trials in phase 1 or 1/2, but development is slow compared to overseas.
Accordingly, the government is planning to secure overseas vaccines first and start vaccination. The vaccines secured so far are 20 million people for Modena vaccine (introduced in the second quarter), 10 million people for Pfizer vaccine (introduced in the third quarter), 10 million people for AstraZeneca vaccine (phased introduction from February to March), and 6 million people for Janssen vaccine. (Introduced in the second quarter) and 10 million vaccines (to be introduced in the first quarter) through a vaccine joint purchase program called’Covex Facility’, totaling 56 million. In order to form collective immunity, more than 60% of the total population must receive the vaccine, which is more than that. The government is planning to complete vaccination for priority vaccination personnel such as medical personnel and nursing hospital residents by the third quarter.
The problem is the effectiveness and duration of the vaccine. Modena and Pfizer vaccines have been reported to be 94-95% effective, and AstraZeneca vaccines have an average of 70% effectiveness, but it is still difficult to estimate how effective each age group will be and how long the antibody will last. In addition, there are no clinical results for children and adolescents under the age of 18, so they cannot be vaccinated at all.
Modena and Pfizer vaccines should be stored frozen at -20 degrees Celsius and -70 degrees Celsius, respectively, so the vaccination process is not easy.
◇Therapeutic agent is also being developed rapidly in Korea
yunhap news -Therapies are divided into two categories: the “drug re-creation” method, which intends to utilize existing drugs for the treatment of the corona 19 virus, and the new treatment agent created exclusively for the corona 19 virus.
Compared to vaccines, there are many clinical trials in the world for therapeutic agents, and 15 products are in clinical trials as of the 27th of last month in Korea. There are two treatments in phase 3, two for phase 2/3 (excluding products that overlap with phase 3), eight for phase 2, and phase 1 for the rest.
The antibody treatment celltrion is developing is the most advanced, and it applied for conditional approval last month. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety plans to shorten the existing treatment period from 180 days to 40 days. If screening proceeds as scheduled, Celltrion’s antibody treatment will be approved as early as February.
The problem is also the effect. Celltrion therapy has been clinically applied only to patients with early mild and moderate symptoms. There is still no suitable treatment for patients with severe or higher severity. In addition, it seems difficult to expect the’short-term vaccine effect’, which was in mind at the beginning of development, because the duration of the antibody is only about two weeks.
◇’K-Defense Prevention’, which was praised, suffers from fatigue
On the morning of the morning of the 31st when it showed sub-zero cold in Seoul, the face shield of medical staff who collect Corona 19 specimens at the temporary screening clinic at Seoul Station is stuck. Reporter Lee Han-hyung-As it is a neighboring country to China, the origin of the corona 19 virus, a large number of confirmed cases occurred in Korea in the early days of the crisis. In February of last year, the number of new confirmed cases soared to 800 per day. However, after correcting the situation, the double-digit number of confirmed cases was maintained from March. Then, in August, it temporarily climbed to the 400 level, but it also showed a double-digit stability from next month.
In the’Sustainable Development Report 2020′ in June of last year, the University of Cambridge in the UK ranked Korea’s COVID-19 quarantine performance as number one among OECD countries. This is because Korea performed better than the United States and Europe in’reproduction index’, which tells how many other people were infected by one confirmed patient, and in’control efficiency’ that prevents spread while maintaining daily life. It was evaluated that Korea’s public health system responded quickly, diagnosed, tracked, and quarantined the confirmed cases, and the general citizens also improved the efficiency of quarantine by wearing personal protective equipment such as masks well.
However, as the corona crisis prolonged, the praised’K-Defense’ is also slowing down. Since last November, local community infections have increased rapidly, and the scale of group infections in vulnerable areas such as nursing homes and nursing hospitals is also increasing. In addition, even state agencies such as the Eastern Detention Center in Seoul neglected quarantine, resulting in a population infection of nearly 1,000 people. It seems that the sense of stability given by the success of’K-quarantine’ has paradoxically called the looseness of quarantine.
It is pointed out that in order to end the corona 19 crisis in the new year, it is necessary to restore a rapid and rapid quarantine system, to support rapid vaccination of vaccines and the development of various treatments.
–
