New Delhi: Covid-19 or SARS CoV-2, caused by coronavirus, has thrown an unprecedented public health challenge before the world. With cases and deaths increasing by the day and no immediate solution in sight, people are eagerly looking forward to the much talked about 'herd immunity', which public health experts believe can save people from infection.
What is the "herd immunity"? It can be obtained in two ways: With a large number of population getting infected, which is fraught with the risk of a huge number of deaths, or by vaccination of people against the virus.
Though over a hundred vaccines are being developed, ever since the Pune-based Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, has announced that the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford will hit the Indian markets by October this year, millions of people across the country are looking forward to this vaccine.
At the beginning of June, AzstraZeneca and Serum Institute of India (SII) had reached a licensing agreement to supply 1 billion doses of the Oxford University vaccine against Covid-19 to middle and low-income countries, including India. To begin with, by this year-end both companies had committed to provide 400 million doses.
SII CEO Adar Poonawalla told the Chandigarh-based daily ‘The Tribune’ in an interview that his company had last month promised to make the vaccine available in the market by October, but based on the ongoing clinical trials, it now expects the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine to be available towards the end of this year.
When told that some scientists have said that any coronavirus vaccine is at least a year away, he said: "Usually it takes about 4-5 years to develop a vaccine. Currently there are more than 100 vaccine candidates at different stages of trials. Each will take their own time, and as I said, we are hoping that the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine will be available towards the end of the year."
Asked how soon the results of phase-I human trials of the Oxford University vaccine be available, Poonawalla said the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine has already progressed to the Phase-III trials stage, and based on the results we are expecting to mass produce the vaccine soon. He said so far, the vaccine has shown positive results in the on-going trials to be optimistic that it will be an efficacious and effective vaccine for Covid-19. He said these trials will be conducted in India as well.
