What you need to know about Oxford COVID-19 vaccine

With the UK giving the green light to the Covid19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and drug maker AstraZeneca India is also expected to follow suit soon as a meeting of the decisionmaking body began on Friday giving new hope of beginning the end of the pandemic as the New Year ushers inThe authorisation in the UK recommended two doses administered with an interval of between four and 12 weeksThis regimen was shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective at preventing symptomatic Covid19 with no severe cases and no hospitalisations more than 14 days after the second dose according to AstraZenecaNow known as Covid19 Vaccine AstraZeneca it was formerly called AZD1222AZD1222 was coinvented by the University of Oxford and its spinout company Vaccitech It uses a replicationdeficient chimpanzee viral vector based on a weakened version of a common cold virus adenovirus that causes infections in chimpanzees and contains the genetic material of the SARSCoV2 virus spike proteinAfter vaccination the surface spike protein is produced priming the immune system to attack the SARSCoV2 virus if it later infects the bodyAs announced on November 23 the primary efficacy endpoint based on a pooled analysis showed that the vaccine was 704 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic Covid19 occurring more than 14 days after receiving two doses of the vaccineA secondary efficacy endpoint of prevention of severe disease demonstrated no cases of severe infections or hospitalisations in the vaccine groupIn addition to the programme led by Oxford University AstraZeneca is conducting a large trial in the US and globallySerum Institute of India SII the worlds largest vaccine manufacturer by volume is manufacturing a version of the OxfordAstraZeneca Covid19 vaccine Covishield in IndiaPrime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Punebased company on November 28 to review vaccine developmentThe company this week said that it has a stockpile 4050 million doses of its Covid19 vaccineIndia is likely to receive majority of these 50 million dosesWe have 4050 million doses of Covishield stockpiled Once we get regulatory approvals in a few days it will be down to the government to decide how much they can take and how fast We will be producing around 300 million doses by July 2021 Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla recently said in a press conferenceThe company applied for emergency authorisation of the vaccine in India in DecemberIt is expected that this vaccine will play a major role in Indias plan to vaccinate its population against Covid19 due to several factors including lowcost ease of storage and transportThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever