The COVID vaccine is a global urgency as the pandemic widens its net. So far many results from trials have proven enthusiastic. With the alliance of US drugmaker, Pfizer German biotech company BioNTech has entered the final stage trial, joining four other candidates in a late-stage trial. Moderna’s vaccine candidate for final-stage testing began this week, with participants at various sites around the US. Based on whether the tests turn out successful, Pfizer-BioNtech could make finalization and submit the vaccine for regulatory approval, expectedly by October.
10 main updates include the following:
1) The Pfizer vaccine is undergoing study in the US and elsewhere. Like Moderna, Pfizer is focusing on recruitment of 30,000 participants for the trial.
2) Pfizer has an agreement to sell 100 million doses of its vaccine to the US government and give it the option to buy 500 million more.
3) Candidates from both Moderna and Pfizer rely on a new technology allowing quicker development and manufacture compared to traditional vaccine production methods. But it does not have an extensive track record.
4) Johnson and Johnson is launching clinical trials in the U.S. this week.
5) Production is constantly ramping up by manufacturers as testing keeps advancing, as the virus is still rampantly spreading across the world.
6) US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins said that Moderna could ready tens of millions of doses when and if the vaccine is deemed safe and effective.
7) The Oxford University vaccine candidate is already into final-stage trial in Brazil and it had reported promising results in early trials.
8) Brazil and UAE each have a candidate from China in the final-stage trial.
9) Five sites in India are ready for the third and final phase of human trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. The Serum Institute of India, the largest vaccine maker in the world, has been chosen by Oxford and its partner AstraZeneca to manufacture the vaccine once it is ready.
10) Covaxin is the first indigenous vaccine developed by India at IMS and SUM Hospital, Bhubaneswar against COVID-19 and is derived from a strain of SARS-CoV-2 isolated by ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune. (With Agency Inputs).

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