Časoris is an online newspaper aimed at children. Each week we’ll take an article and post it here as a Slovene-English dual text.
Je cepivo varno?
Is the vaccine safe?
Written by Dora Adamič, translated by JL Flanner & G Translate
Ponavadi razvoj cepiva traja 10 let ali celo več. Kako smo torej lahko dobili cepivo proti novemu koronavirusu v enem letu?
A vaccine usually takes 10 years or more to develop. So how could we get a vaccine against the new coronavirus in one year?
Razlogov je več.
There are several reasons.
Vsa zdravila gredo skozi zahtevne postopke odobritve. Ko se prične razvoj cepiva, znanstveniki najprej preučijo virus in raziščejo, kako bi cepivo sploh delovalo.
All medicines go through demanding approval procedures. When vaccine development begins, scientists first examine the virus and investigate how the vaccine would work at all.
Že ta faza lahko vzame več let. Pri novem koronavirusu so jo močno skrajšali.
This phase alone can take years. In the new coronavirus, it was greatly shortened.
Znanstveniki na začetku teste izvajajo na celičnih kulturah, šele nato na živalih, na primer laboratorijskih miškah. Takrat preverjajo varnost in učinkovitost cepiva.
Scientists initially perform tests on cell cultures, and only then on animals such as laboratory mice. They then check the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.
Ker pa človek ni miš, sledijo še klinična testiranja na ljudeh.
However, since humans are not mice, clinical trials in humans follow.
Najprej varnost cepiva preizkusijo na manjši skupini ljudi. Če ne zbolijo, študijo razširijo na večje število prostovoljcev. Pri vsaki fazi testiranja se njihovo število poveča in na koncu znaša okoli 30.000 ljudi.
The safety of the vaccine is first tested on a small group of people. If they do not get sick, they expand the study to a larger number of volunteers. At each stage of testing, their number increases and eventually amounts to about 30,000 people.
Hkrati pričnejo preizkušati učinkovitost cepiva; torej, ali ljudi sploh zaščiti pred okužbo. Obenem ugotavljajo, kakšna doza cepiva je najprimernejša.
At the same time, they begin to test the effectiveness of the vaccine, thus whether it protects people from infection at all. At the same time, they determine what dose of vaccine is most appropriate.
Faze kliničnega testiranja si običajno sledijo druga za drugo, tokrat pa so se med seboj prekrivale. To pomeni, da so hkrati testirali učinkovitost in predvsem varnost cepiva na zelo velikem številu ljudi in tako hitreje izpeljali vse klinične študije.
The phases of clinical testing usually follow one another, but this time they overlapped. This means that they tested the effectiveness and, above all, the safety of the vaccine in a very large number of people, and thus carried out all the clinical studies more quickly.
Prav tako znanstveniki niso imeli težav z iskanjem prostovoljcev.
Moreover, the scientists had no trouble finding volunteers.
»Ponavadi izbiranje prostovoljcev traja tedne ali mesece. V tem primeru pa se je to zgodilo čez noč,« pravi profesor Adam Finn, raziskovalec, ki sodeluje pri razvoju cepiva podjeta AstraZeneca v sodelovanju z univerzo v Oxfordu.
“Usually, selecting volunteers takes weeks or months. In this case, however, it happened overnight,” says Professor Adam Finn, a researcher involved in the development of the AstraZeneca vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford.
Financiranje ni bilo ovira, ker so cepiva razvijala večinoma velika podjetja s podporo mnogih držav.
Funding was not a barrier because the vaccines were developed mostly by large companies with the support of many countries.
Nacionalni inštitut za javno zdravje je prejel eno prijavo neželenega učinka po cepljenju in prijavo smrti, ki je časovno sovpadala s cepljenjem v domu za starejše.
The [Slovenian] National Institutes of Public Health received one report of an adverse reaction after vaccination and a report of a death that coincided in time with the vaccination at a nursing home.
Read more stories and improve your Slovene at Časoris, while all our dual texts can be found here.
