Malta has 330,000 doses of prospective COVID vaccine allocated

Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne has announced that Malta has been allocated 330,000 doses of a potential vaccine for COVID-19.

In a tweet this morning, Fearne said that this would mean that Malta would be amongst the first nations to protect all its vulnerable and frontliners. This would be followed by a vaccine for the entire population, later, he said.

Scientists and researchers have been scrambling to develop an effective and safe COVID-19 vaccine since the pandemic began in China in December 2019. 

Vaccines mimic the virus they protect against, stimulating the immune system to develop antibodies. They must follow higher safety standards than other drugs because they are given to millions of healthy people and so require long periods of safety testing. Vaccine development for new infectious diseases can take as long as 5 to 10 years, but efforts are being made to accelerate development of a vaccine for COVID-19.