India Approves First AstraZeneca Corona Vaccine… As if I will start vaccination sooner or later

Input 2021.01.01 22:18

India, a country with a population of 1.3 billion, also approved the use of the Corona 19 vaccine by AstraZeneca, a multinational pharmaceutical company following the UK and others, Reuters reported, citing officials from the authorities on the 1st.

According to reports, the Indian pharmaceutical authorities decided to approve the emergency use of the corona vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca in the UK.

Earlier on that day, an expert panel under the Indian Central Pharmaceutical Standards Administration (CDSCO) held a meeting on whether to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine. Indian media NDTV also said that after the panel approved the urgent use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, it recommended the CDSCO. According to the results of this meeting, the Indian authorities make a final decision on whether to introduce drugs such as vaccines.

This is the first time that the corona vaccine has been approved for use in India. Prior to India, countries that approved the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine were the UK, Argentina, and El Salvador.

In India, the local pharmaceutical company Serum Institute (SII), the world’s largest vaccine company, has been conducting clinical trials of AstraZeneca vaccine. It is known that SII has already produced 50 million inoculations in preparation for approval. SII plans to increase production to 100 million batches per month by March.

AstraZeneca vaccine can be stored refrigerated because it uses a non-toxic virus as a gene carrier. The principle of inducing an immune response is different from that of Pfizer’s or Modena’s vaccine developed using’messenger ribonucleic acid’ (mRNA) containing the genetic information of the virus.

It can be transported, stored, and managed for at least 6 months even at a normal refrigerator temperature of 2 to 8 degrees. On the other hand, Pfizer is required to transport a freezer at -70 degrees Celsius. It can only be stored for 5 days in a regular refrigerator. Moder and vaccine should also be stored at -20 degrees Celsius, and cannot exceed 30 days at 2-8 degrees Celsius.

The AstraZeneca vaccine also has the advantage of being cheaper than the other two vaccines. It is about 4,500 won (one dose), which is about 1/5 of Pfizer’s and 1/8th of a modena vaccine.

However, the average immune effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine is 70.4%, which is lower than that of Pfizer (95%) or Modena (94.5%). Participants who first administered half of the vaccine dose first and fully dosed one dose a month later had a prophylactic effect of 90%, and those who took the full dose of both doses showed that the preventive effect was 62%.

Currently, in India, three companies, including SII, an Indian pharmaceutical company Barat Biotech, and Pfizer, have applied to the Indian authorities for urgent use of the vaccine. India plans to start vaccinating sooner or later according to the approval. The number of priority vaccination targets set by the Indian government is about 300 million people, including medical staff, police, soldiers, and people in their 50s or older.

The cumulative number of coronavirus cases in India was 10,2867,091 on the day (based on the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare), an increase of 235 from the previous day. The number of new confirmed cases per day, which reached 100,000 in September, has recently decreased to around 20,000.