Well, the year 2020 has been such a damaging year for everyone, since the world was suffering from the novel coronavirus causing the covid19 pandemic. The outbreak of this deadly virus was reported in Wuhan city, China, in December 2019. Since then the virus has attacked over 65 million people and taken the lives of almost 1.5 million people to date.
The world was not prepared for such a devastating pandemic to outbreak, people all over the world had to be quarantined for months. There was a shortage of proper medical care which lead to a huge death toll.
Doctors, policemen, frontline workers, healthcare workers, and many others worked extremely hard around the clock to fight back the Covid 19 pandemic, there were tough times due to lack of resources and the victims' number was just increasing.
Covax initiative by “WHO”
“WHO” says that there are currently more than 100 COVID-19 vaccine candidates under development, with a number of these in the human trial phase. The COVAX initiative by “WHO” is working in collaboration with scientists, business, and global health organizations through the ACT Accelerator to speed up the pandemic response. WHO has also promised to purchase 2 billion doses of vaccine after its development and have committed that there will be a distribution of those vaccines to 92 countries and India is among those 92 countries.
But now the times are changing, the situations are slowly falling back to its usual place, though there are chances of a second wave due to cold weather, the vaccine development is fast-tracked like never before by many researchers and vaccine developing companies. The estimation is that the vaccine can be available to the public by early to mid-2021. People most at risk will be prioritized.
Top vaccine developing companies and their progress.
The companies which have been giving better results in the phase1 and phase2 trails are given permission to conduct the phase3 trials. There are 12 companies who have been given authorization for phase3 trials and the companies that are in the top race to make a breakthrough with the vaccine against covid 19 and they are :
1.) Pfizer, BioNTech
This company has achieved the first authorization in the world to develop the vaccine as they have shown promising results in the phase3 trials conducted among 43,000 volunteers with almost 95% efficacy and a very less percentage of people with mild side effects. Also, Britain has approved the Pfizer vaccine and granted emergency use approval. Based on current projections they are expecting to produce globally up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
2.) Moderna
This company has also conducted the Phase 3 trials among 30,000 volunteers and has said that the results show 94.5% efficacy on 16th Nov and also there are mild side effects. They have requested an emergency use approval and are expecting to produce their vaccine by Dec 21 if they are approved and will be able to supply 20 million doses by end of 2020 and plans to have one billion doses by next year.
Indian companies developing the vaccine
There are 7 companies that are working their way towards the development of the covid vaccine by the start of 2021 namely Bharat Biotech, Serum Institute, Zydus Cadila, Panacea Biotec, Indian Immunologicals, Mynvax, and Biological Ebut among these 7 companies the top companies that are in the verge of a breakthrough with better results are :
1.) Bharat Biotech
It is India's first covid-19 vaccine candidates approved for human trials with 26,000 volunteers in many states of India. It is a Hyderabad-based biotechnology firm working closely with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV).
There is news that after the Phase 3 trials if the vaccine gets approved it will be out in the next couple of months.
2.) Serum Institute
The serum institute of India has collaborated with Oxford University and AstraZeneca to manufacture the COVID-19 vaccine Covishield in the country. also said that it has already produced 40 million doses of AstraZeneca's potential COVID-19 vaccine. They have also enrolled for the phase 3 trials.
How does a vaccine work and how it is developed?
Vaccination is nothing but a safe and effective way of protecting people from dangerous diseases, vaccines trigger your immune system and make it ready to build the body's natural defense against the virus. The vaccine helps our body in recognizing the virus and producing antibodies to fight the pathogen that entered the body.
When a community is vaccinated everyone is protected even those few people who aren't vaccinated because the more the people are vaccinated less the chance for the pathogen to circulate and affect those who are not vaccinated.
Vaccines are developed based on results from multiple human trails i.e they are called the phase-1, phase-2, phase-3 trails. there is also another clinical trial before phase-1 which is the developed vaccines is tested on animals to see if the experimental vaccine is safe for the human population or not.
After the clinical trials on animals, the vaccine is tested on a small group of individuals to confirm safety and efficacy. The results from these trials also conclude the right dosage for the patients basically these trials are tested on healthy adult volunteers. If there is progress in phase-1 the vaccine is tested on hundreds of volunteers in phase-2 and then thousands of volunteers in phase-3 trails
How can the vaccine be considered safe? Are there any side effects? are they fatal?
No vaccine in this world can give a 100% efficacy rate. In medicine, there are always side effects but how dangerous are they is the main argument.
It is seen that After all these rigorous trials and testing the results are closely monitored and the vaccine’s efficacy and safety are checked. There are some mild side effects like fever, headache, muscle pain, fatigue, etc.
Long-term safety of the vaccines cannot be guaranteed but in any case, there is only a rare chance of fatal side effects of this vaccine.
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