When will a Coronavirus vaccine be ready? When will the Coronavirus pandemic end? Is a COVID-19 vaccine being prepared? Dr Rajesh Bhardwaj, a senior ENT specialist, helps us understand the COVID-19 vaccine development process. He talks about the various strategies that are being used to develop a Coronavirus vaccine and safety techniques that we can rely on in the meantime.
Video Breakdown:
0:30 What is a Vaccine?
1:13 The ideal Vaccine
1:51 Production of vaccine against COVID-19
2:34 Protection that we already have
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Video Transcript:
In the scientific or health care industry, never has so much money been spent in such quick a time, in trying to produce an effective and safe vaccine. Never before has there been so much global collaboration to produce a vaccine that’s safe, as soon as possible.
The purpose of the vaccine is to introduce some kind of artificial immunity in the human host so that when the actual virus attacks, the human has some kind of immunity against it, and does not get the disease.Various strategies are used to make vaccines, and we have used them successfully in the past for many dreadful diseases like Tuberculosis, Chicken pox, Measles, Rubella etc. The eradication of small pox has been largely due to vaccination. We are very close to eradicating Polio, again because we have effectively used safe vaccines for the human population. And that is why we are pinning hope on a safe vaccine to prevent us from catching the COVID-19 infection.
The ideal vaccine must be safe. It must be effective so that as an when a person is given a vaccine, it should reliably prevent the person from catching the COVID-19 infection. It must be affordable. It must be made readily available for 1.4 billion Indians. There is a large capacity the we require for vaccine production so that every one of us can be given the vaccine in the shortest possible time and the most economical manner.
There is no clear indication as yet, there are many leading contenders: The Moderna vaccine, the Oxford university vaccine and the CanSino vaccine from China – They are in their third stage or phase three clinical trial, but we don’t know who will win this race. Various strategies are being used like messenger RNA, or using a virus and putting the coronavirus spoke on it so as to illicit an artificial immune response. Viral replication deficient strains are being used
so that the virus is implanted in the body but does not reproduce, so that the body hosts an immune response against that particular viral strain.
But we have protective techniques that we can practice when waiting for the vaccine, they are:
First, physical distancing. We must maintain at least 2m distance from other humans so that the virus is not transmitted to us. The second protection we have is wearing a mask. Wearing an effective mask, either a 3-ply or an N95 mask for healthcare workers, is a good and safe protection against catching the infection. The third thing we have is frequent hand washing or hand sanitization. If there is no water available and we can’t use soap, then we must rely on hand sanitizers where the ethyl alcohol content is greater than 70%. Since we already have these three safe techniques or strategies available, we must rigorously and vigorously adopt them so that our reliance and dependence on a vaccine is considerably reduced, and by our own responsible social behaviour we can try to stamp out this disease from our country.
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