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| 2,360 participants were trained during national level Training of Trainers which comprised state immunization officers, cold chain officers, IEC officials, development partners |
Good news for all Indians The drug controller general of India has given restricted emergency to use approval to two corona vaccines.
- Covishield
- Covaxin
Covishield vaccine has been developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, While Serum Institute of India conducting its trails and manufacturing in India. This vaccine is made using an adenovirus vector and encodes the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. Its efficacy is 70.42 percent.
Covaxin Vaccine is an indigenous Covid-19 vaccine which has been developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with ICMR (India Council Of Medical Research) and National Institute of Virology which is located in Pune. This is a whole virion inactivated corona vaccine, which has been approved in clinical trial mode.
Covaxin has undergone phase-1 and phase-2 clinical trial and has been found safe and effective in mounting in the immune response. The phase-3 efficacy trial of Covaxin initiated in India with the recruitment of 25,800 volunteers. Approval of the Covaxin Vaccine has been given especially in the context of mutant strains.
These vaccines have been approved based on the recommendations of the subject expert committee. A committee that consists of domain knowledge experts from the fields of Pulmonology, Immunology, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Paediatrics, Internal medicines etc. With two approvals, India is all set to start vaccinating for corona infection.
After the coronavirus strain of UK, a new Coronavirus strain of south Africa has now created panic across the globe. Although both of these strains have mutations the south African strain has more mutations than UK strain.
Which has caused the significant change in its spike protein. These mutations give rise the possibility that many vaccines do not protect against this coronavirus strain. To understand why the vaccine may become ineffective, let's first understand how the vaccine works?
Vaccines teach the human body to trigger an immune response including the creation of antibodies to fight the virus. Antibodies are nothing but tiny proteins which attached to virus surface disabling it. This ability to stick to the virus may enhance or decline due to the change in the spike protein of coronavirus.
Scientists are now starting to understand that if the vaccine will be effective in protecting us against this new strain of the virus. Let's hope our vaccines are found effective against this new strain and can act as an armour against the mutant strain of Coronavirus as well.
Indians are soon get vaccinated for covid-19. As India gears for covid-19 vaccination drive several mock drills and dry runs are conducted at various locations in India to ensure that the vaccination drive goes smoothly.
Recently mock drills of vaccination were conducted 286 session sites spread across 125 districts. In the east district the dry run conducted at three sites or more which included a public health facility, Private health facility, Rural or urban outreach sites.
All the states and district officials were trained on the operation guidelines for conducting the dry run. For the vaccination drive total of 114000 vaccinators have been trained on the process to be followed to the vaccination sites which includes beneficiary verification, vaccination, cold chain and logistics management, biomedical-waste management, uploading the information Co-win software etc.
It has been ensured that the cold chain infrastructure is sufficient to ensure last-mile delivery of Covid-19 vaccine and there is sufficient supply of syringes and other logistics to begin covid-19 vaccination drive.
Operation feasibility of using the co-win application in the field environment for planning implementation and reporting at the block and district and state level is also been assessed through these dry runs.
Once the dry run complete vaccination drive will start in full swing. stay safe and do remember to vaccinate on time.
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