How well will vaccines work?

EVEN MIRACLES have their limits. Vaccines against the coronavirus have arrived sooner and worked better than many people dared hope. Without them, the pandemic threatened to take more than 150m lives. And yet, while the world rolls up a sleeve, it has become clear that expecting vaccines to see off covid-19 is mistaken. Instead the disease will circulate for years, and seems likely to become endemic. When covid-19 first struck, governments were caught by surprise. Now they need to think ahead.To call vaccination a miracle is no exaggeration. A little more than a year after the virus was first recognised, medics have already administered 148m doses. In Israel, the world’s champion inoculator, hospital admissions among those aged below 60, who have not received a jab, are higher than ever. By contrast, among the largely inoculated over-60s they are already nearly 40% below their mid-January peak and they will fall further. Although vaccines fail to prevent all mild and asymptomatic cases of covid-19, they mostly seem to spare patients from death and the severest infections that require hospital admission, which is what really matters. Early evidence suggests that some vaccines stop the virus spreading, too. This would greatly slow the pandemic and thus make it easier to alleviate lockdowns without causing a surge of cases that overwhelms intensive-care units. Those findings, and many more, will harden up over the next few months as more data emerge (see ).