On Tuesday, June 29, the Centre cleared the US-made Moderna for emergency use in India. This happens to be the fourth vaccine for the coronavirus that has been cleared in the country.
Moreover, Mumbai-based pharmaceuticals Cipla has been permitted to import the COVID-19 vaccine. So far, the vaccines used for immunisation has been Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and Serum Institute of India's Covishield. Meanwhile, Russia's Sputnik V was also cleared recently.
However, details of a rollout plan are not out yet. The information with regards to how many doses will be available and when has not been informed as of now. Furthermore, Cipla is only looking at receiving donated vaccines; commercial agreements are still being processed.
According to reports, out of all four, Moderna has the highest effectiveness. It is 94 per cent effective compared to Sputnik (91 per cent), Covaxin (77.8 per cent) and Covishield (74 per cent).
On the other hand, according to the latest researchers’ report, the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines provide protection against COVID-19 variants B.1.617 and B.1.618 that was first identified in India. As per the pre-print paper posted to the online server biorxiv.org on Sunday, May 16, the B.1.617 and B.1.618 variants seem to be partially resistant to the antibodies elicited by vaccination. This result was based on lab experiments involving cell cultures.
The new research involved serum samples collected from nine people who recovered from coronavirus, six people fully vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and three people fully vaccinated with Moderna's vaccine.
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