Faizel Patel – 04/12/2020
The co-founder of Doctors Hub in India says while a vaccine takes years to get regulatory approval, the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine has been expedited because of the pandemic and the availability of funding by international agencies for its research and development.
The United Kingdom has become the first country in the world to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, a landmark moment in the coronavirus pandemic that paves the way for the first doses to be rolled out across the country next week.
Pfizer said last month a final analysis of the Phase 3 trial of the vaccine shows it is 95% effective in preventing infections, even in older adults, and caused no serious safety concerns.
The announcement means the UK has vaulted past the United States and European Union in the race to approve a vaccine, months into a pandemic that has killed almost 1.5 million people worldwide.
Speaking to Radio Islam live from India, Dr. Joyeeta Basu explains how the COVID-19 vaccine works.
“This is called the MRNA vaccine. It takes the MRNA which is the messenger MRNA and they inject this RNA into your body and this MRNA will teach our cells to make a protein, which is the spike protein and is present on the COVID-19 cell. It produces R Body to produce this kind of a protein and that’s how that produces antibodies and this is what protects us from getting infected when the COVID enters our body.”
Dr. Basu says patients infected with the Coronavirus will need two doses of the vaccine.
“This should be a one off vaccine, a lifetime vaccine. But we’ll see how it progresses and we will have to see how it goes. But MRNA vaccines usually typically are lifelong vaccines.”
Dr. Basu says she believes that the vaccine in the UK is expected to cost around £ 15 (R306) and in the US about $ 20 (R304) and should be subsidized by all governments.
Listen to the interview with Dr. Joyeeta Basu
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