The vaccine is the third to be approved by Health Canada following the December approval of vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc with BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc.

“With Pfizer, Moderna, and now AstraZeneca, Canada will get more than 6.5 million doses before the end of March,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters. “And there will be tens of millions more doses to come between April and June.”

Canada has ordered 20 million doses of the vaccine from AstraZeneca, and is due to receive 1.9 million through COVAX – the international initiative set up to provide equitable access to vaccines – in the first half of the year.

On Friday, Canada said it had secured an additional 2 million doses through its agreement with Verity Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc and the Serum Institute of India.

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The new mid-stage trial will determine whether the vaccine is effective on people between the ages of 6 and 17, according to a statement from the university.

Around 300 volunteers will be enrolled and first inoculations are expected this month, Oxford said.

The two-dose Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been hailed as a ‘vaccine for the world’ because it is cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals.

AstraZeneca has a target to produce 3 billion doses this year and aims to produce over 200 million doses per month by April.

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As the vaccines reached Brazil early on Saturday, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar said, “Made in India vaccines arrive in Brazil.”

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro thanked PM Narendra Modi for the vaccines and said, “Namaskar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Brazil feels honoured to have a great partner to overcome a global obstacle by joining efforts. Thank you for assisting us with the vaccine exports from India to Brazil. Dhanyavaad.”

To this, PM Modi replied, “The honour is ours, President Jair M. Bolsonaro to be a trusted partner of Brazil in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic together. We will continue to strengthen our cooperation on healthcare.”

Bolsonaro referred to the Covid-19 vaccine from India as ‘sanjeevni booti’ from Ramayana.

The Indian ambassador to Brazil said, “Today is a historic day in India-Brazil relations. Brazil is the first country to get such a consignment. PM Modi said we’ll make vaccine available to all countries and we’ll continue to work towards that and I wish you good luck in your efforts.”

Two flights, each carrying 2 million doses of Covishield vaccine, departed from the Mumbai airport for Brazil and Morocco in the early hours of Friday.

India is one of the world’s biggest drugmakers, and an increasing number of countries have already approached it for procuring coronavirus vaccines.

Since Wednesday, India has begun sending Covid-19 vaccines under grant assistance to Bhutan, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Seychelles.

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Earlier ICMR and SII have further collaborated for the clinical development of development of COVOVAX, developed by American company Novavax and upscaled by SII.

SII said it has enrolled 1,600 participants in India for late-stage trials of AstraZeneca’s candidate, and also plans to seek regulatory approval to run late-stage trials for Novavax vaccine.

Covishield is the AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine candidate and is the most advanced in human testing in India. SII and ICMR is planning to pursue early availability of the shot in India.

The ICMR had funded the clinical trial site fees for Covishield. SII and ICMR are currently conducting mid-stage clinical trials of the shot at 15 centres across India.

The two frontrunner coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc and Russia have shown positive results and are said to be effective by over 90% against COVID-19. Now Moderna is also getting closer to releasing the data on its late-stage trials of the corona vaccine candidate.

Meanwhile, in India, experts have said that Pfizer news may not be of much use in India as the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine needs storage at extreme cold temperature (-70 degree Celsius) and arranging such cold chains would be a huge logistical issue.

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The phase-III human clinical trial began at the Sassoon General Hospital in Pune on September 17. King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital in Mumbai on September 23 began the phase II and III trials of the coronavirus vaccine.

Some participants in the trials for the coronavirus vaccine have also received their second doses and have not reported any adverse side-effects.

However, some did develop a fever after the dose of the coronavirus vaccine, but top scientists said that those are mild reactions and should not be worried about.

Some investigators also said that developing a fever is considered a common and mild side-effect of vaccines.

In September, Aztra Zeneca Plc said it has paused a late-stage trial of one of the leading coronavirus vaccine candidates after an unexplained illness in a study participant. After reviews the safety of the vaccine and its procedures, the human trials were resumed.

The Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) has partnered with British-Swedish pharma company AstraZeneca for manufacturing the coronavirus vaccine candidate, being developed by the University of Oxford, UK.

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The announcement came as part of the collaboration between eh SII, Gavi, Vaccine Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This brings the total now to be delivered by the partnership to up to 20 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines.

It will accelerate the manufacturing and delivery of up to an additional 10 crore doses of future safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines, priced at a maximum of US$ 3 or Rs.250 per dose for low- and middle-income countries in 2021

The SII is the leading vaccine manufacturer in the world and has partnered with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for producing the Covid-19 vaccine being developed by the scientists of the Oxford University.

The announcement by the SII came days after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the AstraZeneca reached an agreement with the SII to supply 1 billion doses of Oxford University’s Covid-19 vaccine to low and middle-income countries. Johnson announced this during his speech at the 75th high-level debate of the United National General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday.

The Oxford vaccine, being produced under brand name of Covishield is now in Phase-III of clinical trials in a multi-national vaccine development programme. The SII is conducting the trials in India.

Serum Institute of India is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses produced and sold globally (more than 1.3 billion doses). Vaccines manufactured by Serum are accredited by the World Health Organization, Geneva and are being used in approximately 170 countries across the globe.

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Now the country’s total coronavirus case stands at 51,18,253.

COVID-19 Testing Update. For more details visit: https://t.co/dI1pqwfbRz @MoHFW_INDIA @DeptHealthRes #ICMRFIGHTSCOVID19 #IndiaFightsCOVID19 #CoronaUpdatesInIndia #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/joQaGm2E7R

— ICMR (@ICMRDELHI) September 17, 2020

According to Union health ministry update on Thursday morning, the number of active cases crossed the million mark and currently stand at 10,09,976 whereas 40,25,079 patients have been discharged from hospitals.

The recovery rate has further improved to 78.53 per cent, the health ministry said.
It further said that nearly 59 per cent of the new recoveries came from five states – 23.41 per cent from Maharashtra (19,423 recoveries); and a cumulative 35.5 per cent from Andhra Pradesh (9,628 recoveries), Karnataka (7,406), Uttar Pradesh (6,680) and Tamil Nadu (5,735).

Twenty-seven states and union territories are reporting recovery rates of more than 70 per cent, the ministry highlighted.

Meanwhile, Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) on Wednesday received the approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to resume clinical trials for the Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by United Kingdom’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca.

The trials in India were paused last week after a trial subject in the United Kingdom developed an unexplained severe adverse reaction.

On September 16, the Supreme Court said that the central government has approved the use of Remdesivir and Fabiparivir as medicines to treat the coronavirus disease.

The top court was hearing a plea by the CBI against ten Indian pharmaceutical firms for manufacturing and selling these two medicines to treat the coronavirus disease.

Globally, nearly 30 million people have been infected with as many as 939,427 fatalities. The United States continued to the worst affected followed by India and Brazil. India, however, remained on top of the recoveries chart.

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The stock market was very volatile last week. The main reason for this was the petition before the Supreme Court seeking the waiver of interest during the moratorium period. The apex court heard the petition on Thursday. In the days before that, banking stocks faced strong selling pressure. It also affected the overall market. Banking stocks, meanwhile, saw a relief gain on Thursday as the Supreme Court adjourned the hearing of the petition to September 28. Shares, which have been selling in recent days, rose on September 10 and 11.

The market has been gaining ground this week compared to the previous week’s closing, but it has been volatile throughout the week. At one point, the Nifty fell to below 11,200 points. The news that Amazon has been invited to invest in Reliance Retail and the Supreme Court postponing the moratorium case has helped the market to rise to this level. The market rose to close at 11,500 points on September 11.

The strongest support level for the market will be 11,377 points. If the market rises, there is little pressure at 11,550 points. If it surpasses this point the next strongest pressure point is at 11,800. If the market breaks the 11,377 point support level, the next strong support level is 10,800.

There are four main factors that will determine the success of the market. The most important thing the market is looking at is the petition before the Supreme Court seeking the waiver of interest during the moratorium period. The second factor is the border conflict between India and China. The third factor is that the UK company that developed the vaccine, AstraZeneca, has stopped testing it, raising concerns about the delay in its availability. The market is also worried that the Reserve Bank of India may have to resort to widespread buying of bonds to fill the country’s fiscal deficit.

Even though investors are interested in buying at the bottom level, the volume is low. With the introduction of the requirement for traders to mortgage securities directly in order to earn margins, the volume will be drastically reduced. There are also concerns in the market that this may take time to change. Although it is possible to move forward, investors need to approach the market with caution.

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The Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoH&FW) officials are maintaining that the COVID-19 case fatality rate (CFR) is below 2% and are trying to bring it down to under 1%.

Trials for the Oxford University’s vaccine, developed in collaboration with AstraZeneca, will begin in India on Wednesday. Six volunteers will be administered doses at Pune’s Bharati Vidyapeeth medical college and hospital. This is phase-2 of the trial, as it is not mandatory to conduct phase-1 trials in India, where the vaccine’s safety is assessed.

The Center is in talks with Russia over its vaccine for Covid-19, called Sputnik-V. “As far as Sputnik-V vaccine is concerned, India and Russia are in communication. Some initial information has been shared,” Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said at a press conference.

Fresh guidelines for Unlock 4.0 are expected to be announced in the coming days. The Metro service in Delhi NCR, suspended since March 22 due to the pandemic, is likely to resume in September.

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Mr.Poonawalla said that the vaccine will be made affordable by keeping the cost at a moderate price.

The CEO said that at present the company is working with the AstraZeneca- Oxford vaccine which is undergoing Phase-III clinical trials. In addition to this, the company is planning to start human trials in India in August , this year, with 4000-5000 volunteers. Based on the success of the trials, his company was expecting to launch the vaccine by the end of the year.

The Indian leg of the trial is important because of the higher pre-existing immunity levels of the population.

Shedding more light on what would be the next course of action for the Serum Institute, Mr Poonawalla said he is hoping to get approvals from the government to conduct the phase III vaccine trials in India.

The experimental vaccine, tentatively named as AZD1222, was found to be safe, prompting a strong immune response in over a thousand people it was administered to in early human trials. The preliminary findings were published on July 20 in The Lancet Medical Journal. AstraZeneca and Oxford University have chosen the Serum Institute to produce the vaccine in India once it is ready.

One of the largest vaccine makers in the world, Serum Institute, had last month signed a deal with AstraZeneca to supply one billion doses to India and other low and middle-income-countries. He clarifies that the institute is well equipped with state-of-the-art technology to manufacture COVID-19 vaccine.

Meanwhile the Government of India is speeding up the regulatory clearances needed for the Serum Institute of India’s upcoming phase III trial. Niti Aayog member and the chairperson of the national task force for covid-19 said that the government is also willing to provide financial support and other essential support needed by vaccine developers.

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