200 Corona Vaccines Coming Up!

With more than 9 months having passed since the onset of the pandemic, the race for an effective and safe jab is intensifying. There are as many as 200 vaccine candidates under development and a few frontrunners a giving a ray of hope that the pandemic would come to an end.

Let us take a look at the major vaccine candidates that are nearing approval.

The vaccine prepared by Pfizer and BioNTech became the first to get the approval by the MHRA in UK. It got the approval in November 2020 and the vaccine will be rolled out from next week.

Last week, they declared that the vaccine was 95 per cent effective and they have filed for emergency use authorisation in Europe. There are reports of Pfizer filing for emergency use authorisation from the US FDA, soon after the announcement on efficacy. 

Moderna Inc is expected to apply for US and European emergency authorisation of its Covid-19 vaccine in the next few days after results from a late-stage showed it was 94.1% effective. Moderna also reported that its vaccine’s efficacy rate was consistent across age, race, ethnicity and gender demographics as well as having a 100% success rate in preventing severe cases of Coronavirus. The filing sets Moderna’s product up to be the second vaccine likely to receive US emergency use authorisation this year.

The vaccine candidates of Johnson & Johnson and Novavax Inc are likely to go for approval on January 26, 2021.

Sinopharm/Wuhan and Sinopharm/Beijing, CanSino, pharma giants of China, will go for approval in February 2021. China’s vaccine specialist CanSino Biologics Inc has won a patent approval from Beijing for the Covid-19 vaccine being prepared by it from Beijing for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate Ad5-nCov.

CoronaVac of Sinovac Life Sciences, Beijing, China, is an inactivated vaccine candidate against Covid-19, containing inactivated severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), for its safety, tolerability and immunogenicity. Sinovac is likely to seek approval in April 2021 as reports of its trials are awaited.

Gamaleya (Sputnik V) and AstraZeneca would seek approval in February 2021 while Zydus (ZyCoV-D vaccine)would seek approval in March 2021.

Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech is readying to go for the approval of its vaccine, Covaxin, between April and June 2021.