Corona Vaccine Race: Part 2

Hello everyone,

 

                                Britain becomes the first country to approve the use of Pfizer vaccine from an American Pharma company Pfizer and a German Pharma company BioNTech. This Corona vaccine is the fastest developed vaccine of all time. Generally, the development of a vaccine for any newly found diseases or viruses takes 5-15 years, but Pfizer and BioNTech developed this Corona vaccine in a short time of ten months. This Corona vaccine had passed the human trials with 95% of safety. Pfizer is 95% safe for humans and got a green signal from Britain.

 

How this Corona vaccine developed?

                                All the vaccines are developed from the causative agents of the particular disease. The first vaccine against a contagious disease called Smallpox was developed by a British Dr. Edward Jenner. He weakened the causative agent Variola major and Variola minor to develop the vaccine.

 

Principle of vaccine (Read more about this at Vaccine.)

The causative agents like viruses or bacteria for the certain disease are weakened and given to an organism. The test organism develops antibodies against the particular virus or bacteria and gets ready to fight against the disease upon when subsequently infected with the real virus. The organism gets immunized before it takes a real fight against the virus. With vaccination, the organism develops antibodies and thus get weaponized better than ever.

Basically, vaccination is like a practice match or net practice as in Cricket---players are getting ready to play long innings.   

 

                                Likewise, this Corona vaccine Pfizer has been developed from the Coronavirus itself. Not the entire virus has been taken but a small part of the Coronavirus has been taken. This Corona vaccine is an RNA vaccine because the genetic material of the Coronavirus is an RNA molecule. 

 

                                The genetic code of Coronavirus has been taken which will immunize the subject and will produce the antibodies against the Coronavirus. We are quite positive with Pfizer and having high hopes for this vaccine.

 

                                The Corona vaccine will be stored at -70 °C freezer and transported in a special type of box. This Corona vaccine can be used for 5 days after getting delivery. The estimated price of the vaccine is said to be £15, but it is not clear that if the patient is going to pay or government.

                                One more Corona vaccine which had our hopes on is also getting in the market anytime soon. Talking about Sputnik 5, we cannot say that it will be completely trusted and tested with no or least side effects because it played games with us before in August 2020. Although, Russia had claimed that Sputnik 5 is 95% safe for humans and all clinical trials were passed by it. We cannot predict anything right now, but certainly, Sputnik 5 is also getting our hopes high.

 

                                India is also testing the Sputnik 5 Corona vaccine at limited standards. An Indian company Hetero had done contract with Russia to produce 10 crore doses of Sputnik 5. Russia estimates to sell the vaccine at $10 per dose in international market.

 

                                Other then the vaccines of Pfizer and BioNTech, another American company Moderna has also claimed to have developed a successful corona vaccine. Oxford University’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccine has also claimed the same.

 

                                India is also racing for the Corona vaccine with the Covishield vaccine from Serum Institute of India. Another vaccine from India is Covaxin from Bharat Biotech International and Zydus’ vaccine is almost ready.

 

                                Gujarat is also getting its name registered for this so-called vaccine race by having the approval of clinical trial from the American Food and Drug Department the the vaccine was developed by Switzerland’s’ Rizen and Vadodara’s Alembic named primarily as “RP-7214”. (Read more about Vaccine Race.)

 

                                Another feat from Gujarat is the development of Vaccine Management Software. This software will help in tracking the use of the corona vaccine by keeping records like who got the vaccine, how many are left, and how many doses reached in a certain area. Manually keeping the record is very laborious and Gujarat is developing software for that which will use thumbprints to track the record.

 

Conclusion: Getting news for vaccines every day became a normal routine for us. We have been getting such news since this pandemic started. We can hope this time that it won’t end like it ended earlier. Until then, WEAR A MASK AND STAY SAFE.

Thank You.