World Health Organization says that there are eight companies in the world who are using human trials for their COVID-19 vaccines, and Moderna is one of them. Others are Pfizer and Inovio from US, one is from UK, four are from China.
Moderna, the bio-tech company which developed the vaccine along with National Institutes of Health, announced it yesterday.
The Coronavirus vaccine in works had shown impressive results on the first trial.
This is what the vaccine does to people when given for the first time
The first phase trial of the vaccine was done to check whether the vaccine is actually safe and whether it can make people immune to COVID-19.
Moderna gave the vaccines to dozens of volunteers and their antibodies were measured. It turns out that all of them developed antibodies to fight the virus, and the level was even higher than the people who have naturally recovered from COVID-19.
These antibodies bind themselves to the virus, and then the virus is unable to attack human cells. It cannot multiply, and so it dies. Dr Zaks said:
“We’ve demonstrated that these antibodies, this immune response, can actually block the virus.”
When will it be available for everyone?
FDA has cleared Moderna to execute Phase 2 of their vaccine trials, which will involve hundreds of people instead of a few dozen. And then Phase 3 trials will come along where the vaccine will be tested on tens of thousands of people.
These different stages of trials are necessary to ensure that the vaccine is absolutely safe for mass usage. And conducting all these trials will take a few months to complete, which means that the vaccine can only be available by January.
What are the side effects of this Coronavirus vaccine?
In Phase 1 of the trials, some participants also developed fever and flu when they were injected with the 250mg dose. And participants with the dose of 25-100mg achieved a remarkable level of Coronavirus antibodies, which were higher than the people who naturally recovered from Coronavirus.
So the ideal dosage of the vaccine will be set somewhere between 25-100mg.
There is a catch. In the cases of natural infection and natural recovery, people often get infected again since they don’t have immunity. It is wondered whether the vaccine can stop people from getting re-infected. Dr Zaks said:
“That’s a good question, and the truth is, we don’t know that yet. We are going to have to conduct formal efficacy trials where you vaccinate many, many people, and then you monitor them in the ensuing months to make sure they don’t get sick.”
Featured Image Courtesy: Forbes
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