As the world is reeling under the havoc covid19 has caused since December 2019, many scientists and drug makers and vaccine manufacturers around the world started developing vaccines since it’s the only option for our survival.
Many companies started their trial runs around October, November 2020 and by the early 2021 national regulatory authorities started granting emergency use authorization for many vaccines.
So far 14 Covid-19 Vaccines have been authorised in which six have been authorised for emergency use and even for full use by at least one WHO approved Stringent Regulatory Authority.
Out of 14 Vaccines some are RNA Vaccines (Pfizer- BioNTech) and some are Adenovirus Vector Vaccines ( Sputnik developed by Russia, Oxford- AstraZeneca, Johnson& Johnson, Convidecia).
Some Vaccine are protein sub unit Vaccines like EpiVacCorona and RBD-Dimer and some are Inactivated Virus Vaccines like Covaxin , CoronaVac, CoviVac, Sinopharm (WIBP) , Sinopharm (BBIBP) and QazCovid-in.
In India two vaccines are in play as of now which are Covaxin and Covishield. Covaxin is India’s first indigenous vaccine developed by BHARAT BIOTECH in collaboration with ICMR that is Indian council of medical research. It’s developed using Whole- Virion Inactivated vero cell while Covishield is developed by Serum institute of India, Pune With Oxford- AstraZeneca.
Covaxin is priced at ₹400 and covishield is priced at ₹300 for states while center can procure these at ₹150 as we know for now. Pvt. hospitals can also procure these vaccines from the manufactures at an inflated price.
While we’ve all these Vaccines to get ourselves vaccinated which is very important in this dire situation, Many countries are still to get the necessary No. of vials to innoculate the whole population.
Here’s where we stand as of now-
Israel has innoculated it’s 60% of total population with atleast one dose of covid19 vaccine, UK is at 50%, USA , Bahrain, Hungary, Chile are at 40%, France, Germany, Serbia, Uruguay are at nearly 30%, Turkey and Brazil have Vaccinated around 15% of the population and India stands at 10%.
Most countries are still in the process of vaccinating their population but slow production and essential permissions are stalling the vaccination.
While there are some side effects of the vaccination, you must get vaccinated as early as possible because the benefits outweigh the side-effects.
WHO also suggests vaccination for pregnant women.
Be safe , mask up and get vaccinated!