Corona Vaccine by Oxford University

Oxford University has shared some positive news regarding the novel coronavirus vaccine. Yes, the British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca are the first ones who started their clinical test in late April. When the coronavirus got widespread around the globe, the firm immediately started its work on developing the vaccine. 

Now you must be thinking why the world is keeping high hopes on the University of Oxford?

Well, the University of Oxford has been working on severe acute respiratory syndrome for a long time. And the novel corona disease also affects the respiratory system. So they have started the research on dealing with respiratory problems way before the virus came into the globe. 

There is news doing the rounds that Serum Institute of India is planning to manufacture 2 to 3 million doses of Oxford Covid-19 vaccine by the end of August. They also stated that it has started manufacturing the corona vaccine developed by Oxford University. A week earlier the preliminary reports of phase ½ trials were released and published in the medical journal. The report of the Oxford Corona vaccine stated that it elicits strong immune responses that would fight against the virus. 

Suresh Jhadav, the executive director of SII said that the company is hoping to manufacture 2-3 million doses of vaccine so that it could meet the requirements of a commercial scale batch for phase-3 trial.

Adar Poonawala, CEO of SII, revealed that around 4k to 5k people in Mumbai and Pune will be injected with vaccines by the end of August as a part of phase 3 trial scheduled to last for over 2 months. The trials of phase 3 have already begun in other countries like the UK, South Africa, and Brazil.  

Poonawala also stated that after the success of the initial and licensure trials, they are hoping to manufacture 200-300 million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year. And if everything falls into place then the cost of a vaccine per dose will be around 1000 INR. 

While the world is keeping high hopes at Oxford University, in the early stage of the study, the healthy volunteers who were given the dosage of the vaccine fell between 18-55 years of age. The pregnant women, children and aged people with medical history were not included in the group. So the big question arises: will vaccines work on each and every individual? Another problem is: Can the lab test results be fully relied upon? Will the vaccine work on 7 billion people? So probably we should just hope for the best and wait for the success of phase 3 trials and see what happens.