United Nations stockpiling billion syringes for Covid-19 vaccine

There are many unanswered questions about the vaccines now undergoing clinical trials, including how well they will work to prevent infection. More than 11.12 lakh people have died so far across the world. The pursuit for the magic bullet against coronavirus has become more focussed with the time running out as the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed over a million lives worldwide.

"This is the first report of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine tested on human participants", say the researchers.

Over 90,000 persons received the influenza vaccine in just one week, the health ministry said.

Developer AstraZeneca, which has collaborated with Oxford University experts, has revealed that supplies will be delivered according to a first-come-first-served basis.

In July, it started placing orders with syringe suppliers well in advance, realizing that demand would increase later in the year, and that it would also need time to get supplies to each country.

This investigational candidate induced antibodies without developing serious side effects in early and mid-stage trials. The vaccine candidate is christened as AZD1222 globally and Covishield in India. However, the vaccine's trials resumed in the United Kingdom on September 12. The Phase III trials of BBIBP-CorV are progressing outside china.

United States pharma giant Pfizer, which has jointly developed a COVID-19 vaccine candidate with German partner BioNTech SE, is planning to dispense its single nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (modRNA) vaccine to Americans before the end of 2020.

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"We're recommending that our members participate in this program, sign up and get everything ready to go", said Dr. David Gifford, chief medical officer for the American Health Care Association.

Health officials told a press conference last month that the country expects to be able to produce 610 million vaccine doses annually by year-end, stressing it would be affordable.

Pfizer is awaiting a key data readout later this month, with Bourla adding that the company may know whether or not BNT162b2 is effective by the end of October.

The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal's latest study reported included participants in the range of 18 to 80 years. The most common adverse systemic reaction was fever.

Two injections of BBIBP-CorV at three different doses generated antibodies in all recipients of each group, including older participants, although the data does not prove the vaccine is efficacious, researchers at the CNBG subsidiary, Chinese disease control authorities and other research institutes said in the paper.

The decision to apply for EUA for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate "soon after" a safety milestone is reached in the third week of November will ensure that Pfizer complies with the FDA's recent COVID-19 vaccine development guidance that requires developers to provide safety data from at least half its trial patients taken two months following the final vaccine dose. "But, of course, the magnitude of what we're dealing with in terms of the rollout of the anticipated COVID vaccine is a significant scale-up, over the next couple of years, in terms of the sheer volumes that we're talking about". However, it will lag behind in the race if United States regulators give the go-ahead first.

The company said that if the results are positive then it would file a request for EUA with authorities.