Commentary: The success of a Covid-19 vaccine will hinge on its delivery

By Lois Privor-Dumm, Naor Bar Zeev, and Maria Deloria Knoll

The lesson learned from a long history of using vaccines to fight massively disruptive diseases like smallpox and Ebola is that the vaccine itself is not enough. Like a good punch line, it’s all about the delivery.

The smallpox vaccine was an average one with a limited supply. But small, dedicated teams implemented a winning strategy for it. They focused on rapidly identifying individuals with smallpox and then vaccinating people in their circle or “ring” of potential contacts, creating a cordon of immunity that kept the disease out. The same strategy was recently employed with impressive results in the fight against Ebola.

Read the full commentary, published on STAT News