After months of fretting over whether a COVID-19 vaccine would even be possible, we now have almost five promising vaccine candidates. Moreover, the nation has initiated action plans to take the vaccine from warehouses to the upper shoulders of millions of people in the country whenever it becomes available. Yes! there’s still a long way to go, but how far are we from a vaccine for the novel coronavirus now? Let’s look into it
The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us several lessons. One among them is that you can’t fight a deadly virus all alone. If one of us is unsafe, all of us are. This is why the phrase ‘vaccine nationalism’ becomes a matter of serious concern even when the development of the vaccines are in progress.
It was recently that the country came up with its first indigenous COVID-19 vaccine candidate, named ‘Covaxin’. The Drug Controller General of India’s approval to conduct human trials of Covaxin — developed jointly by Bharat Biotech, National Institute of Virology and the Indian Council of Medical Research — has sparked a glimmer of hope but then a circular last week turned that hope into fear of hasty approach.