COVID-19 Vaccine Development

A government-appointed panel of experts has approved a coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University for emergency use and will send its recommendations to the country’s drugs regulator, the Drugs Controller General of India

This duo spent more than a decade cracking a complex viral puzzle—and their skills were needed once more. Their years of sleuthing and innovating ultimately contributed a microscopic but critical piece to the most promising candidates for COVID-19 vaccines. Two already authorized in the U.S. use their discovery, as do at least two other top contenders.

The World Health Organization has listed Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, a critical step that the United Nations health agency said aims to make the vaccine more readily available in developing nations.

In what has become a familiar pattern, the COVID-19 vaccine landscape has changed overnight, simultaneously raising hopes that more people may soon get vaccinated and triggering confusion. “It’s crazy,” says immunologist John Moore, a vaccine researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Every morning, it’s just, ‘What’s going on?’”

A vaccine developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) has been found to be 79.34 per cent effective against Covid-19, according to an interim analysis, the company said.

Our fundamental comprehension of immune responses to the coronavirus has grown significantly, but more questions—like the longevity of immunity—are still to be answered, especially amid concerns that mutations may help SARS-CoV-2 evade our immunological defenses.

Like the Pfizer vaccine, the Moderna vaccine primes the immune system to attack the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 by delivering a snippet of the virus’s genetic code. That code — known as messenger RNA, or mRNA — instructs the body to build copies of the spike protein that studs the virus’ surface.

Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd on Wednesday said it will buy at least 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine from Germany’s BioNTech SE for use in mainland China next year, if the vaccine receives approval.

As more Covid-19 vaccines approach the finish line of regulatory approvals, the next challenge will be to produce and deliver hundreds of millions of doses as quickly as possible.

“Higher income countries like the U.S. and the U.K. are putting themselves at the front of the line — that’s obviously what’s happening,” Philip Clarke, a professor of health economics at the University of Oxford, said. “The clear failure here is not having stronger international institutions and stronger funding to pay for a vaccine globally.”