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She observes that there are no animal testing studies for these coming Covid vaccines.
Assuming that claim is true, so what? Tests with humans began in March for the Moderna vaccine, and in April for the BioNtech/Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. Over that time: 15K-20K people have received the BioNtech/Pfizer vaccine; 15K-20K people have received the Moderna vaccine; 20K-25K people have received the AstraZeneca vaccine. To date some 10K people have received the Novavax vaccine, and another 5K-10K will in the near future. Because Johnson & Johnson is testing two different dosing regimens, some 45K people will receive that vaccine in testing begun 9/23. Her claim lost significance over 8 months ago.
ETA: This was news to me,
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/researchers-rush-to-start-moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-trial-without-usual-animal-testing/ . If you burrow down about halfway into the article:
That doesn’t mean the scientists have sped past animal testing entirely. Virologists at NIAID tried the new (Moderna) vaccine on run-of-the-mill lab mice, the institute told STAT by email, on the same day that the trial began enrolling participants. Barney Graham, director of NIAID’s vaccine research center, later added that those mice showed the same sort of immune response generated by a similar mRNA vaccine against MERS, another coronavirus. “That level of immune response was sufficient to protect mice from MERS CoV infection,†Graham wrote.
The trouble is, your average lab mouse doesn’t seem susceptible to the new virus. While the bug behind Covid-19 has no trouble co-opting molecules on human cells to get inside and start multiplying, it isn’t so good at latching onto the mouse equivalent. Although Graham can say the response produced in everyday mice looks similar to one that helped mice combat the virus in their bodies when infected with MERS, he can’t yet say the same thing for the new coronavirus, because the mice susceptible to this pathogen aren’t ready yet.
These pathogen-susceptible rodents were specially engineered in the wake of another coronavirus outbreak: SARS, in the early 2000s. To make them easier to infect, scientists adorned their cells with the human molecule that allows certain coronaviruses to slip inside. But when coronavirus research slowed between outbreaks, scientists couldn’t justify the expense of keeping many of them; so while these mice seem to be susceptible to the new virus, too, there aren’t currently enough for experiments to start.
So some animal testing was done on the Moderna vaccine. What limited any value of animal testing was the shortage of lab animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. The testing done yielded safety and immune response data, but because the tested mice were not susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 it could not be determined whether that immune response was effective.
Needless to say, the shortage of lab animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 would impose the same limitations on testing the BioNTEch/Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines - relatively valid for safety, but not for testing effectiveness.
Though the wording is vague, this article mentions that both Moderna and Pfizer used animal testing,
https://www.corporateknights.com/channels/leadership/of-mice-and-men-could-covid-spell-the-end-of-animal-testing-%E2%80%AF-16045839/ .
This article mentions testing with monkeys having been done with the Sinovac and Oxford vaccines,
https://wtop.com/animals-pets/2020/06/monkeys-ferrets-offer-needed-clues-in-covid-19-vaccine-race/ . The Oxford vaccine is the one being tested by AstraZeneca.
So whoever this "WV pharmacist" is, she is uninformed/misinformed. And in doing the fact-checking I also am now better informed.
ETA, Part 2: While its vaccine is probably a few months away from requesting EUA, Novavax also did animal testing,
https://ir.novavax.com/news-releases/news-release-details/novavax-advances-development-novel-covid-19-vaccine . Vaxart's vaccine is even farther out, but they did testing with hamsters,
https://investors.vaxart.com/news-releases/news-release-details/vaxart-announces-additional-data-hamster-challenge-study-its .
