Decoded: Why the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine holds promise over Pfizer's

The Pfizer vaccine (more than 90 per cent effective) must be stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius. Creating cold chains to deliver this to billions is impossible in any reasonable time

The joke on Delhi social media is that the two new coronavirus vaccines would be unacceptable to Delhi colleges with admission cut-offs far higher than the rated effectiveness of about 95 per cent. Jokes aside, most people don’t understand what “95 per cent” (or “94.5 per cent”) means.

Nor do people outside the biomedical research circuit grasp the magnitude of creating a working vaccine for any disease, within a year. To put that in perspective, the fastest vaccine development cycle on record was four years, for mumps.

The rapid-fire development of Covid-19 vaccines is not only due to the enormous resources thrown