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At CU, the battle against COVID-19 proceeds into a new phase with vaccinations 

In early March of 2020, CU’s campus was a lively place where everyday operations and interactions were “business as usual”.  Later in the month, Chancellor Phillip DiStefano announced the shutdown of campus due to the health concerns associated with COVID-19. Campus has been nearly deserted since.

One year later, faculty and students are coming to campus in reduced numbers and campus safety guidelines assist in the reintroduction of normalized school operations. Within these 365 difficult and disorienting days, much of the world learned about and improved its management of COVID-19. And today in Colorado, we witness the long awaited distribution of three FDA approved vaccines to all citizens who want them in a graduated plan.

The three FDA approved vaccines are: Pfizer, Moderna and (most recently approved) Johnson & Johnson. Each vaccine yields efficacious results. 

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, approved for the first emergency use authorization (EUA) on Dec. 11, shows efficacy of 95% at preventing symptomatic COVID infection after two doses. TThe Moderna vaccine, introduced on Dec. 18, was 94.1% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 after the second dose. Developed by J&J’s vaccine division, Janssen Pharmaceuticals,  their single-dose vaccine, approved on Feb. 27, was shown to be 66% protective against moderate to severe Covid infection in a multi-country study. Importantly, it was 85% effective in protecting against severe disease and there were no hospitalizations or deaths among people who received the vaccine of a large clinical trial. 

As of April 20 in Colorado, 2.5 million people have been immunized with one dose and 1.5 million people are fully immunized. There are over 1000 vaccine providers and CU is one of them. 

“At Medical Services, we are really proud to be partnering with the state and Boulder County to be what’s called a designated provider to our CU Boulder and local community,” said Gloria Brisson, Senior Director of Medical Services, during a campus Q&A webinar regarding vaccine distribution. 

Governor Jared Polis’s vaccine rollout plan consists of 6 phases; each phase authorizes  specific age groups and demographics to receive the vaccine.

“Currently the state is in Phase 1B.2, which means that all of the people in the prior phases have been eligible for vaccination.” Patrick O’Rourke, Chief Operating Officer, said during the webinar on March 2. “They’re trying to complete the population of Coloradans aged 65 to 69 and K-12 educators and some people who are necessary for the continuity of the state government. That phase is proceeding and very shortly we think we’re going to be entering Phase 1B.3.”

Since the beginning of January, the university administered vaccines to individuals within the campus community in efforts to complete phases 1A, 1B.1, 1B.2, 1B.3, 1B.4 and now 2. As of April 20, the university has fully vaccinated 3,159 individuals.  

Medical Services wants to vaccinate as many people as they can, but the vaccine supply varies each week. The state provides medical services with the vaccines, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, and the current supply is scarce. Recipients do not have a choice in what vaccine they receive due to the minimal supply. 

Progress is being made in vaccinating critical demographics. On Feb. 26 Governor Polis announced that forward facing higher education faculty and staff were eligible in phase 1B.4. This phase of distribution began on Mar. 19. On Apr. 2, Colorado moved to Phase 2, making all adults age 16 and over eligible for the vaccine.

Administered vaccines and continued practice of Center of Disease Control’s (CDC) guidelines have moved Boulder County to a “Level Blue” on the COVID dial. The variables for the dial include:
New Cases: How much the virus is circulating in a county.
Percent positivity: Whether there is sufficient COVID-19 testing to capture the level of virus transmission.
Impact on hospitalizations: Whether hospitalizations are increasing, stable or declining.
As of April 20, the county reports a low number of cases, low positivity rates and a declining or stable amount of hospitalizations. 

“Now this could change if any of the new COVID variants become more prevalent, or if we aren’t diligent in how we are looking at our behaviours and what we’re doing to make sure that COVID remains well controlled within the county and state, but it’s headed in the right direction,” O’Rourke said. 

The three new mutations (United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil) of COVID-19 generate concern because the variants seem to spread more easily among people and the U.K. variant specifically is, “Associated with an increased risk of death compared to other variants,” according to the MAYO Clinic.  

Dr. Gail Daukas is a PhD scientist and she worked in the biotechnology industry doing cell biology research for the development of drugs. She is currently an instructor at the Community College of Denver. “Mutations are just changes in the DNA or RNA of the virus,” Dr. Daukas said. “Sometimes those mutations change the virus enough so that it changes how easily it can be transmitted by respiratory droplets, how easy it can infect skin cells in my nose, how long it can live in the air making transmission easier.”

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines utilize messenger RNA, mRNA, that delivers a small amount of genetic code to cells producing the T-surface protein (known as the spike) on the SARS-2 virus. The proteins produced with the mRNA instructions activate the immune system, teaching the cell to identify the spike proteins as foreign, and thus help it develop antibodies to fight the virus.

“In terms of how long immunity would last, the good news is that the current vaccines, the three that we have approved in the U.S., show robust T cell immunity to all the variants, meaning that it still has that really protective nature,” Matt McQueen, Director of Epidemiology and member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the CU Boulder Pandemic Response Office, said. “So the efficacy in terms of whether you might get sick may change and at that point in the next two or three years, we may need a booster if there’s enough drift in the variants. At this point it is too early to say it [the vaccine] would be annual.”

Various questions regarding COVID-19 are being researched as we speak. The countless hours spent in the lab manipulating and understanding the virus and its behavior can only help us predict so far into the future. 

In the spring of 2020, humanity was faced with a harmful, unforeseen problem. One year later the problem still persists, but collective actions from research on CU’s campus and around the world have presented advanced scientific breakthroughs and prevention of the excessive loss of life due to COVID-19. 

Scientists, medical health professionals and society still have a lot of work to do to kill this virus, not only within the lab but through our own contributions. Wear a mask. Stay 6 feet apart. Get vaccinated when it’s your turn. 

Photo by Kevin Wu