Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 15: Even as Russia announced on Thursday that its third COVID-19 vaccine will be ready by December, this year, after two being already in the pipeline, a skeptic World Health Organisation estimated that it will be at least till 2022 when the “young and healthy ones” in the world can hope to lay their hands on Corona vaccines.
In New Delhi, the prime minister Narendra Modi, chaired a review meeting of the research and vaccine deployment ecosystem against the COVID-19 pandemic including testing technologies, contact tracing, drugs and therapeutics etc. The Prime Minister reiterated the country’s resolve to provide cost effective, easily available and scalable solutions for testing, vaccine and medication, not only for India but for the entire world.
The meeting was attended among others by the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, Member (Health), NITI Aayog, Principal Scientific Advisor, senior scientists, and other officials. Vardhan had earlier estimated that India might get its first Corona vaccine by the first quarter of 2021.
Soon after Russia announced that it had a third vaccine ready at Chumakov Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the WHO chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan said the wait for Covid-19 vaccine might get longer for young population who are in sound health. At a WHO social media gathering Swaminathan said, “Most people agree, it’s starting with health care workers, and front-line workers, but even there, you need to define which of them are at highest risk, and then the elderly, and so on,” Swaminathan said.
“There will be a lot of guidance coming out, but I think an average person, a healthy young person might have to wait until 2022 to get a vaccine,” she added.
Russia’s proposed third vaccine was an inactivated vaccine, which once approved will take the country’s vaccine number to three, and this is likely to happen by December 2020, media reports from Russia said. Its first vaccine Sputnik V came out in August making Russia the first country to have come up with a Covid-19 vaccine. Only yesterday, Russia approved a second Covid-19 vaccine, reports claimed.
Russia at present is undergoing a second wave of Covid-19. On October 14, the country had 1,340,000 cases with an average daily increment rate of 1.1 per cent.
Dr Swaminathan said by 2021, there would be “at least one safe and effective vaccine.” But it would be available in “limited quantities” and hence vulnerable people would be prioritised.
“People tend to think that on the first of January or the first of April, I’m going to get the vaccine, and then things will be back to normal. It’s not going to work like that,” Swaminathan said.
Countries like China and Russia which have been administering its population with vaccine shots are also following vaccine prioritisation pattern. Reports said China vaccinated its army in July and is now immunising government officials, store staff apart from health care professionals. It is also mulling vaccinating students who are headed abroad for studies. Russia prioritised journalists in vaccination apart from frontline health workers.
In India, the central government has already indicated that the vaccine would be first distributed to the vulnerable sections. A high-level committee will chart out the prioritisation process. “Prioritisation of groups to be vaccinated shall be based on key considerations like occupational hazards, risk of exposure to the infection, overall health etc.,” Harsh Vardhan had recently stated. The states have been asked to submit lists of priority population groups that need to receive vaccine first — doctors, nurses, sanitation staff, ASHA workers, surveillance officers etc. of both private and government sectors.
At the review meeting, Modi appreciated the efforts made by Indian vaccine developers and manufacturers to rise to the COVID-19 challenge and committed to continue government facilitation and support for all such efforts.
The Prime Minister stated that regulatory reform was a dynamic process, and experts in every current and emerging domain should be used by the regulator proactively, as many new approaches had emerged.
The Prime Minister took stock of Health Ministry’s comprehensive distribution and delivery mechanism for vaccines. This includes mechanisms for adequate procurement, and technologies for bulk-stockpiling, filling vials for distribution and ensuring effective delivery.
He also directed that both sero-surveys and testing must be scaled up. He said the facility to get tested regularly, speedily and inexpensively must be available to all at the earliest.
Russia’s rush-through approach to come out with a Corona vaccine at the earliest at any cost, however, has not been appreciated by the doctors and scientists in many countries. Finding loopholes in Russia’s approach, many experts point out that Russia is not doing large-scale trials of its vaccines and hence it has been able to announce two vaccines between August and September.
The first Sputnik V is an adenovirus vector-based vaccine. President Vladimir Putin’s daughter was inoculated with the vaccine. Post-registration clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine are going on involving 13,000 volunteers.
The second vaccine is EpiVacCorona, a synthetic vaccine based on peptides, which is being touted as safer than Sputnik V. It consists of short synthetic peptide fragments of virus proteins, which the immune system can use to identify and neutralise the virus. The experts said the peptide-based vaccine did not induce any reactogenic responses and was noted for its high level of safety.
The clinical trials of the second vaccine involved 100 volunteers. The first batch of 60,000 vaccine doses of the second vaccine will be produced in the near future. Vektor Centre, which developed the second vaccine, will launch post-registration clinical trials in a number of Russian regions involving 40,000 volunteers.
The second vaccine will be tried on 150 people aged over 60 to check its efficacy among older population.
The third vaccine has received permission to conduct the first and second stages of clinical trials at medical facilities in Novosibirsk, St Petersburg and Kirov. During the first stage, 15 volunteers were inoculated with this vaccine on October 6. They have not reported any serious complications or side effects.
The second stage of the third vaccine will begin on October 19 on 285 volunteers. The clinical trials of this vaccine are expected to conclude by December.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova and Chief Sanitary Doctor Anna Popova have received the second vaccine to test its effectiveness. Both of them reported no side effects.
In India, however, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories was denied permission to conduct clinical trial of Russia’s first vaccine Sputnik V in India as Russia tested the vaccine among a small group and Dr Reddy’s proposed a larger size for the trial. Dr Reddy’s has again submitted a proposal to the Drug Controller General of India.