In this episode of Covid Clinic, Dr Indranill Basu Ray talks about coronavirus vaccine frontrunners— Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine, National Institute of Health/Moderna Vaccine, and SinoVac. If you have any Covid related cases, write to us at covidclinic@outlookindia.com
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00:00 Hello, everybody.
00:04 Welcome to another episode of the COVID Clinic.
00:07 As I had promised before, because of the demand from hundreds and thousands of people, everybody
00:13 wanted to know what is the latest about vaccines.
00:17 That's a very complicated field, but I'll try to bring out some of the vaccines which
00:21 are foremost in the development.
00:24 And we can hope in the next few months, one or more of them may be available for actual
00:30 vaccination of common people.
00:33 So the first is, of course, the Oxford, University of Oxford, AstraZeneca vaccine, which is basically
00:40 a harmless artificial virus that enters the body, infects the cell, and forces the cell
00:47 to produce a protein just like the surface of the coronavirus.
00:53 So as more and more protein is produced, the body spurs immune reaction that forces the
01:01 body to produce antibodies against these proteins.
01:04 Now, these proteins are the real proteins that are contained on the virus itself.
01:10 So when the body produces antibody against these proteins, the actual virus, when it
01:15 infects, it doesn't get a place to stay.
01:18 It gets kicked out.
01:20 And that's the rationale for developing this particular vaccine.
01:26 Now this artificial virus, which is otherwise completely harmless in the vaccine, has been
01:32 tried in clinical trials.
01:35 The latest result has come a couple of days back, published in a world famous journal
01:41 called Lancet.
01:42 And that has consistently shown that the vaccine, which contains the harmless virus, is capable
01:48 of mounting immune reaction where a large amount of antibody is produced so that the
01:55 vaccine will be effective when we use it in the field to actually treat people and thus
02:01 help them not to get the actual coronavirus.
02:05 The second vaccine that's been going ahead at a massive speed is what is known as the
02:11 National Institute of Health/Moderna vaccine, which is actually a synthetic RNA.
02:19 Now what is the RNA?
02:20 RNA is ribonucleic acid that is the genetic material inside the virus, the actual coronavirus.
02:27 So this synthetic mRNA is something that will be given as a vaccine.
02:34 It enters the cell.
02:36 And again, what it does is it forces the cell to produce proteins that is found on the coat
02:44 or the surface of the actual virus.
02:48 And as proteins are produced that is contained in the actual virus, the body again will generate
02:55 massive reaction against it by producing antibodies.
02:59 And once antibody is produced, the particular human being who has been vaccinated is primed
03:06 against the real coronavirus.
03:09 Because when the real coronavirus comes in, remember it comes with this coat protein.
03:13 Now you already have antibodies against that coat protein, so no way the body is going
03:19 to let that coronavirus stay and infect you.
03:23 So again, we had a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine that shows that
03:28 this particular vaccine has consistently been producing enough antibodies.
03:35 So it's thought of that it should be effective, but we still have the stage three clinical
03:41 trials, which is supposed to start quite soon.
03:45 And that will give us a better understanding.
03:47 Both the first vaccine has minimal side effect, including fever, pain at the local site, and
03:55 stuff like that, which is also found in most influenza vaccine today.
04:00 And slightly more than that, but nothing very severe has been shown by any of these two
04:07 vaccines.
04:08 The third vaccine has been developed by what is known as Sinovac, which is a Beijing company
04:15 that has produced a vaccine against SARS coronavirus 2.
04:23 Based on initial report, looks like they have shown success also in developing antibodies
04:30 against the actual coronavirus.
04:33 However, there's been some report that the particular vaccine may be less effective against
04:40 people 50, 55 years of age or more.
04:44 And that could be a source of worry, because remember, coronavirus is most lethal to this
04:51 subset of people who are 50, 55 or older, and who have coronary artery disease, hypertension
04:58 and diabetes.
05:01 So Sinovac is having stage three clinical trials in China.
05:05 It has been reported, but we do not know what the truth is.
05:08 They may do some stage three clinical trials even in UAE.
05:14 So long story short, we have a couple of vaccines that's on the development.
05:19 I'll talk about some of the other ones in my next talk.
05:22 So these three are the topmost online, seems to be most advanced, but you never know.
05:28 A couple of other drug companies are going very fast in developing their own vaccine
05:34 and one might beat the other to be ready for production and mass use.
05:40 That's all from me today.
05:41 Again, please don't hesitate to give us your opinion.
05:45 Write back to us, tell us what you want to hear, and whatever questions that you have
05:49 on this or any related topic in COVID, we are there to answer for you.
05:54 Hope you guys keep safe.
05:56 Make sure you keep distance from other people.
05:59 Make sure you use your face mask and stay safe and take care.
06:04 Bye for now.
06:05 [MUSIC]