COVID-19 vaccine:US approves Pfizer vaccine, first doses expected in 24 hours

The United States has green lit the emergency use authorisation to the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine candidate on December 11. The US FDA has approved the vaccine for emergency use, with the first vaccinations expected within days.

Pfizer’s vaccine developed with German partner BioNTech, showed 95% efficacy in preventing the disease in a late-stage trial.

Following the announcement, US President Donald Trump called it a medical miracle achieved within 9 months. Trump also said the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be administered with 24 hours.

The Pfizer vaccine has already been approved for the public in the UK, Canada, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. India is also considering the Pfizer dose after US pharma giant sought emergency use authorisation here. India is also actively considering two other vaccine candidates, those being developed by the Serum Institute of India (SII) in partnership with AstraZeneca and Oxford University and the second by Bharat Biotech.

AstraZeneca to combine dose with Sputnik V

AstraZeneca is to start clinical trials to test a combination of its experimental covid-19 vaccine with Russia’s Sputnik V shot to see if this can boost the efficacy of the British drugmaker’s vaccine. The announcement was made by Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Trials will start by the end of the year and Russia wants to produce the new vaccine jointly if it is proven to be effective, said the RDIF wealth fund.

AstraZeneca said it was considering how it could assess combinations of different vaccines, and would soon begin exploring with Russia’s Gamaleya Institute, which developed Sputnik V, whether two vaccines based on a common-cold virus could be successfully combined.

India gives nod to mRNA vaccine

India’s first indigenous mRNA vaccine candidate developed by Pune-based Gennova
has been given approval from drug regulators to initiate Phase 1/2 human clinical trials.

The mRNA vaccines do not use the conventional model to produce immune response. Instead, they carry molecular information to make the protein in the body through a synthetic RNA of the virus.

The host body make use of this to produce the viral protein that is recognised, thereby, making the body mount an immune response against the disease.
According to the Department of Biotechnology, the mRNA-based vaccines are scientifically the ideal choice to address a pandemic because of their rapid developmental timeline.