COVID-19: The Race to Develop a Vaccine

The race among countries, organizations, and companies is on to come up with a vaccine for COVID-19. This race is not about winning a title in a hundred meters sprint, but rather to defeat a deadly virus that has wreaked havoc.
I am writing this to help my readers track the progress of several vaccines that have shown promising results. First we need to understand the three phases of human trials.
Phase 1 trials: Ensure whether a treatment is safe and determine an effective dose.
Phase 2 trials: Test a treatment in a larger group and get an early read on effectiveness.
Phase 3 trials: Conducted in a large group of individuals to confirm efficacy and identify rare side effects.

Moderna Inc’s mRNA-1273

mRNA-1273 was developed by Moderna based on prior studies of related coronaviruses such as those that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
Recently, scientists reported that the vaccine boosted up people’s immunity just as it was expected to do. The participants who were injected the vaccine back in March (early phase) showed very positive results with no serious side-effects. The vaccine is currently in its second phase of trial, and is expected to reach its third and final phase with 30,000 participants, on July 27.

The Russian Candidate

The Russian vaccine candidate, being developed by Gamalei national research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology in partnership with ministry of defence began its phase 1 human trials on June 18. The researchers have reported that the vaccine is working as it should and producing antibodies.

Numerous reports last week claimed that Russia has completed the human trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, but these reports did not specifically mention that only the phase 1 has been completed. phase 2 was supposed to start on July 14, and there’s still no clarity regarding phase 3 trials.

Oxford University\’s ChAdOx1 nCoV-19

Researchers at the University of Oxford believe that their vaccine candidate is capable of providing \”double protection\” against this deadly virus. Blood samples taken from the volunteers show the development of antibodies and T-Cells. This discovery is a breakthrough for the antibodies fade away in months while T-Cells stay for a year or so. T-Cells directly kill infected host cells, activate other immune cells, produce cytokines and regulate the immune response.
This vaccine is in its third phase of trials that means it is absolutely \”on track\”, and could be available as early as September. \”Nobody can put final dates… things might go wrong but the reality is that by working with a big pharma company, that vaccine could be fairly widely available around September and that is the sort of target they are working on,\” David Carpenter, Chairman of the Berkshire Research Ethics Committee, said.

Bharat Biotech\’s COVAXIN

COVAXIN has been developed by Bharat Biotech India in collaboration with ICMR’s National institute of Virology. It is an “inactivated” vaccine made by using particles of the COVID-19 virus that were killed, making them unable to infect or replicate.
Although ICMR plans to make this vaccine available to public by August 15, bioethics experts have questioned how all three phases of testing for a vaccine candidate yet to even begin human trials can be crunched into a timeframe of a month. The predetermined release date of yet to be clinically tested vaccine is an extremely ambitious dive by an organization which has a reputation to go by the books. Even though COVID-19 pandemic is a classic example of “Hannibal Ante Portas” which calls for an immediate defence, it is essentially important that ICMR thoroughly follows the rule book as it has a “fail-safe” reputation to maintain. ICMR is not only our first line of defence, but also the last, and even the slightest crack can crumble the hopes that 1.3 billion hearts carry with them.