Moderna Covid vaccine
Drug regulator of India, DCGI, has allowed Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company Cipla to import Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for restrictedemergency use in India.Moderna’s vaccine is going to be the fourth COVID-19vaccine available in India after Covaxin, Covishield and Sputnik.
About Covishield
• This vaccine is locally manufactured by Serum Institute of India. It was created using a weakened variant of a common cold virus called adenovirus from chimps. This virus has been altered to resemble coronavirus, which will boost the immune system to produce antibodies.
About Covaxin
• Covaxin is an inactivated vaccine. It has been made with coronaviruses after killing them. Thus, it is safe to inject into the body. It was created and manufactured by Bharat Biotech. Immune cells in the body have the ability to recognise a dead virus after it has been injected. It prompts the immune system to produce antibodies against the coronavirus.
About Sputnik
• This vaccine was created by Gamaleya Institute in Russia. It is composed of a harmless cold-type virus as a carrier which will deliver a small portion of coronavirus in the body. Body then starts to manufacture antibodies which are specificallyadapted to coronavirus after being vaccinated.
About Moderna Vaccine
• Moderna’s method of creating a vaccine to protect against Covid-19 is based on messenger RNA(mRNA). mRNA helps the cells to generate immunityagainst coronavirus. This vaccine along with Pfizer isbeing preferred among wealthy countries. They are more than 90% effective at preventing coronavirus
ZyCoV-D: World’s first DNA-based Vaccine
• Indian pharmaceutical company Zydus Cadila is going to apply to the Central Drugs Regulator (DGCI) for emergency approval of the corona vaccine ZyCoV-D.
Key Points:
If approved, it will be the world’s first DNA-basedvaccine. With this, the number of vaccines available in the country will increase to 4. So far, Serum Institute’s Covishield, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and Russia’s Sputnik-V are being used in India.
ZyCoV-D is a needle free vaccine. This allows the vaccine to be injected into people’s skin under high pressure.
About ZyCoV-D
ZyCoV-D, a plasmid DNA vaccine, comes underthe Vaccine Discovery Programme supported by the Department of Biotechnology under the National Biopharma Mission.
Plasmids are circular deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)vectors that can be used as vaccines to prevent various types of diseases.
• The antibodies produced by the vaccine were able to neutralize the wild type virus indicating the protective potential of the vaccine candidate. No safety concernswere observed in repeat dose by both intramuscular (directly into muscles) and intradermal (superficialinjection into skin) routes of administration.