Coronavirus vaccine news update: Russia to approve COVID19 vaccine next week? Facts you should know

Coronavirus COVID19 vaccine news update status tracker trials: Two of India’s indigenous vaccines by Bharat Biotech International Ltd and Zydus Cadila have successfully completed the Phase I stage of human trials. (Reuters image)

Coronavirus COVID19 vaccine news update status tracker trials: The US-based Novavax has said that its potential Coronavirus COVID19 vaccine has shown positive results during human trials. The experimental vaccine candidate is named ‘NVX-CoV2373’. Phase 1 portion of Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trial of Novavax’s Coronavirus vaccine has revealed that it “was generally well-tolerated and had a reassuring safety profile”. The initial human trials of Novavax saw two dose levels (5 and 25 µg) administered in 131 healthy adults ages 18-59 years.

In good news, two of India’s indigenous vaccines by Bharat Biotech International Ltd and Zydus Cadila have successfully completed the Phase I stage of human trials. The phase I of clinical trials has been completed in less than a month. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) director-general Balram Bhargava said that three vaccines are in different levels of clinical testing. The first one is the inactivated virus vaccine, which is the Bharat Biotech vaccine, and it has completed its phase I study in 11 sites and has started its phase II study. Similarly, for the DNA vaccine of Zydus Cadila, India has completed the phase I study and has embarked on phase II studies. According to the latest report, Zydus Cadila said phase II of human trials of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate ZyCoV-D will commence from August 6.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac, and Sinopharm are at the final stages of Human Trials. However, the World Health Organisation has cautioned Russia against its Coronavirus COVID19 vaccine candidate. Russia has said that it was planning to approve a vaccine candidate developed by Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute in the second week of August. Russia has also claimed that the vaccine will be available in the market in September. The mass vaccination is likely to begin in October. In the second week of July, Russia’s candidate vaccine was likely to have completed Phase I human trials. The phase-II trials commenced on July 13. A Chinese vaccine has been granted approval for military usage. However, this vaccine has yet to complete phase-III trials.

Around the over 160 vaccine candidates are pre-clinical or clinical trials. In India, there are at least eight candidate vaccines are being developed.