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The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus is a novel betacoronavirus that likely emerged late last year from an animal reservoir in China. There is little to no pre-existing immunity against it in the human population. The clinical picture for the disease it causes, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), ranges from very mild to fatal. The virus is highly transmissible and has spread globally.
As of 22 September 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reporting that it is tracking the development of thirty-eight SARS-CoV-2 candidate vaccines under clinical evaluation. There is an urgent need to determine when the first of these candidates will have been found to have a high degree of efficacy and will have been administered to a significant number of people.
The WHO defines vaccine efficacy as follows:
Vaccine efficacy: % reduction in disease incidence in a vaccinated group compared to an unvaccinated group under optimal conditions
This question asks:
Will a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate that has demonstrated an efficacy rate >75% in a n>500 RCT be administered to 10M people by March 1st 2021?
This question resolves positively if by the 1st of March 2021 a credible article is published that presents the claim that at least 10 million people have been administered a vaccine that had been previously shown to have an efficacy rate exceeding >75% in a randomized controlled trial with at least 500 participants. It resolves negatively if by this date, there is no such credible report.
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