AstraZeneca completed it's clinical trials here in the United States which means a fourth vaccine could be on its way.
The vaccine candidate is a single dose vaccine, like Johnson and Johnson. It doesn't need to be frozen in cold temperatures and it can be transported more easily which makes it easier to vaccinate more people quickly.
This new vaccine could mean that millions of people will get protection from a single shot.
Emily Shears, the Director of Operations at UPMC Hamot says this news is promising. "The more vaccines that have a good efficacy the better, really getting those in that vulnerable population will be very good and a good step to closing out this pandemic."
In clinical trials, the AstraZeneca vaccine had a 79 efficacy rate and according to Epidemiologist and Erie News Now Contributor Dr. Dawson, "We are looking at 7 to 7.5 people out of 10 not having symptoms if they are exposed to the SARS-Covid-2 virus."
Dawson says she understands people may be worried about the effects some people experienced in the United Kingdom after they received their AstraZeneca vaccine and says it's hard to connect vaccines to triggering blood clots.
But it shows how serious the United Kingdom took information since they noticed irregularities and stopped vaccines until they figured it out.
Dawson says the possibility of four vaccines is great news. But, she cautions against trying to compare them to one another.
"It's really challenging when you try to compare the vaccines because everyone looked at something just a little bit different and so if you are just saying efficacy, it really isn't fair", says Dawson.
Shears says the state determines which vaccines the hospitals get. UPMC Hamot officials don't know if they'll get the AstraZeneca candidate, but she says the hospital is ready to vaccinate thousands more people if it gets more doses.
"We would be able to scale up to whatever we need to do and we know we have a large wait list right now due to the distribution allotments that has been getting received so far, once those goes up we are ready to scale up as well" explained Shears.
Regardless of whether the candidate is approved and makes its way here, Shears says it's a definite sign of progress.
"We've come a long way these past 12 months have really gone full circle, today's the one year anniversary of opening our collection centers, so we've gone on focusing how can we get everyone tested and right now our focus is how can we get everyone a vaccine" said Shears.
AstraZeneca says it plans to ask the FDA emergency use authorization, so it can distribute the vaccine here in the U.S.