Addressing the nation, PM Narendra Modi said, “India’s vaccines enjoy much credibility across the world . We’ve earned this via our track record. Most children in the world get their vaccine shots of those made in India. The world’s trust is on our Made in India vaccines will rise soon. These Indian vaccines are cheaper than foreign shots and easy to use. Some foreign doses are close to 5000/dose and to be stored in -70 degrees.”

PM lauded doctors and scientists who worked tirelessly to create the vaccine. He also stressed the importance of taking two doses of covid vaccine.

On the inaugural day, around 3,006 session sites across the country will be virtually connected. Around 100 beneficiaries would be vaccinated at each session.

India has two vaccine candidates so far — Covishield by Serum Institute of India and Covaxin by Bharat Biotech. The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) approved the vaccines for emergency use on January 2.

All states and UTs will have multiple session sites or centres at the district level. There will be a registration and waiting room, a vaccination zone and an observation room.

Once the beneficiary reaches the site at the designated time and date, they will produce identification documents. When they are verified, they will be sent to the vaccination room where they will receive the shot. After the shot, the beneficiary will have to wait in the observation room and will be under observation for 30 minutes. There are emergency kits and ambulances on site.

In the first phase, 30 crore health workers, frontline workers and senior citizens will be vaccinated. All the beneficiaries will be registered on the CoWIN app. Only beneficiaries who have registered on the app will be allowed to visit the centre

COWIN APP

The vaccination process will use the online digital platform developed by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that will help the authorities keep track in real-time of vaccination stocks, storage temperature and track the beneficiaries.

COVID-19 VACCINE HELPLINE

A 24X7 call centre has been established to answer queries about the coronavirus pandemic, vaccine rollout and the CoWIN software.

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Dr V K Paul, a member(Health), NITI Aayog, said on Tuesday that Covishield of Serum Institute of India, and Covaxin are the two COVID-19 vaccines that have received Emergency Use Authorisation (EAU). He said that these vaccines are the safest vaccines and have been tested on thousands of people and side-effects are negligible.

The Union Health Ministry has said apart from Covishield and Covaxin, there are four more vaccines in the pipeline. Their manufacturers may soon apply for emergency use authorisation in India.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said Zydus Cadilla, Sputnik V, Biological E and Gennova are the COVID-19 vaccines that are in the pipeline and are currently in advanced clinical trials in Indian

About half a crore doses of Serum Institute of India (SII’s) Covishield vaccine were shipped out of Pune to cities across India on January 12, as the country launched its final phase of preparations for the mass inoculation drive against the novel coronavirus.

What one dose of Covid vaccines will cost in India?

Covishield: Rs 200 per dose (for first 100 million doses), Rs 1,000 per dose thereafter at private outlets
Covaxin: Rs 206 per dose
Pfizer-BioNTech: Rs 1,431 per dose
Moderna: Rs 2,348 to Rs 2,715 per dose
Sinopharm: less than Rs 5,650 per dose
Sinovac Biotech: Rs 1,027 per dose
Novavax: Rs 1,114 per dose
Gamaleya Centre: less than Rs 734 per dose
Johnson and Johnson: Rs 734 per dose

Meanwhile, India reported 15,968 new Covid-19 cases, 17,817 discharges and 202 deaths in last 24 hours, as per Union Health Ministry data. The total cases now stand at 1,04,95,147, active cases are 2,14,507 and overall recoveries is at 1,01,29,111. The total death toll is 1,51,529.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, a total of 18,34,89,114 samples tested for Covid-19 till 12th January, of which 8,36,227 samples were tested on January 12.

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This comes after drugmaker Pfizer on November 18 said that their coronavirus vaccine candidate has shown 95 percent efficacy in the late-stage trial. The efficacy of vaccine was consistent across age and ethinicity demographics and there were no major side effects.

The vaccine is developed with German partner BioNTech SE.

Moderna had also announced that its experimental Covid-19 vaccine ‘mRNA-1273’ was 94.5 percent effective in preventing coronavirus.

In India, the third phase trial of Indian vaccine candidate Covaxin is also set to start on November 20 in Haryana. The trials will take place at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Science, Rohtak in Haryana.

Covaxin is being developed indigenously by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Meanwhile, those worried whether the vaccines can protect against coronavirus mutation can relax. A new study involving a University of York virologist has said that vaccines currently being developed for Covid-19 should not be affected by recent mutation in the virus.

Most vaccines under development worldwide have been modelled on the ‘D-strain’ of the virus.
Since then, the virus has evolved to the globally dominant ‘G-strain’, which now accounts for about 85 per cent of published SARS-CoV-2 genomes.

There had been fears that the G-strain, within the main protein on the surface of the virus, would negatively impact vaccines under development. But the research by Australia’s national science agency – the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) – found no evidence that the change would adversely impact the efficacy of vaccine candidates.

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The pharma company’s immediate focus is to conduct the Phase 3 trials successfully across sites in the country.

The company’s vaccine candidate, Covaxin, has been developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology using inactivated Sars-Cov-2. The virus was isolated in an ICMR lab.

The price of the vaccine is yet to be determined, as the company is still looking at the cost of product development.

Bharat Biotech received approval from the Drugs Controller General of India to conduct Phase 3 clinical trial to establish the efficacy of the vaccine candidate. The company has begun site preparatory exercises for Phase 3, recruitment and dosage will begin in November.

The trial is conducted in nealy 30 sites around 14 states. About 2,000 subjects are enrolled per hospital and will provide tow doses each of the vaccine and placebo recipients.

The pharma company is looking to supply for both government and private markets. It is also in its preliminary discussions with other countries for probable supply.

Nearly Rs 350-400 crore is invested for the development of vaccines and the new manufacturing facilities, which include investments for conducting the Phase 3 clinical trials, in the next three months.

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The Hyderabad-based firm is planning to test over 20,000 volunteers across 12-14 states.

Covaxin, developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute of Virology, is an inactivated vaccine that is expected to work by injecting the “killed version” of the covid-19 virus into the body to develop an immune response.

Bharat Biotech plans to enroll 25,000 to 26,000 participants across the country, including Telengana, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Maharashtra and Bihar.

As of now Bharath Biotech and Serum Institute of India(SII) got the nod to conduct phase-3 trials. SII is said to be in the process of recruiting and vaccinating participants for the third phase of testing its candidate, Covishield.

Other vaccine candidates in the fray are those of Zydus Cadila, which is close to completing phase-2 trials of ZyCov-D, and of Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute, which will soon begin phase 2/3 trials of Sputnik V in collaboration with Dr Reddy’s.

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India’s first COVID-19 vaccine COVAXIN has got the Drug Controller General of India’s approval for phase I and II of human clinical trials. The two trials are designed to test whether the vaccine is safe, rather than whether it is effective.

The experimental vaccine has been developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, in collaboration with the ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV). This could get underway across the country in July 2020. Results are expected to be out by October 2020, following which larger clinical trials will be conducted.

The trials are among many across the world. There are around 120 vaccine programmes under way worldwide. This is the first India-made vaccine and developed from a strain of the virus that was isolated locally and weakened under laboratory conditions.

Bharat Biotech, which has delivered more than 4 billion doses of vaccines worldwide, has developed vaccines for H1N1 and rotavirus, among other diseases.

The permission to initiate clinical trials came after the company submitted results that they had generated through pre-clinical studies, demonstrating safety and effective immune responses.

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