“We have already two aspirants for the vaccine who go through the third stage of the study. The first phase – on animals – and the second phase – on people – were completed and the third stage was started to see if these vaccines are safe. The data from the second phase are very promising in both of the candidates for the vaccine,” expert in public health issues Ala Tokarchuk stated in a public debate titled “COVID-19: Memories of the Future or what History teaches us?” that was staged by IPN News Agency.

Ala Tokarchuk believes that two doses of vaccine will be most probably needed – one for initiating the immunity and another one for achieving a sufficient level of immunity. “All these problems are now being investigated. It is too early to say that immunity does not appear or that it lasts for two or three months. There is no sufficient evidence. I believe in medicine based on evidence. It is already known that the quality of scientific communication during the current pandemic was one of the problems. A lot of articles were published without being revised by the scientific community of different countries and these contain many untruthful data,” stated the expert.

Ala Tokarchuk noted it is not yet clear what the goal of all those actions taken against the pandemic in Moldova is. “They are so fragmented and even incoherent that I admit they do not want to stop the pandemic. Each day can be considered point zero or the starting point. But before making a start, we should understand where we want to get to,” she concluded.

The debate “COVID-19: Memories of the Future or what History teaches us?” was the 146th installment of the debates project “Developing political culture through public debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.