Dr Randeep Guleria, Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delh, said today that India is in talks with the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, but not so much with Moderna’s candidate vaccine.
Speaking at the 18th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS), 2020, Guleria answered a series of questions about Covid-19 and the vaccine situation in the country.
He said: “We have two challenges in front of us now. One, breaking the chain of transmission, two, making the vaccine available to everyone.”
When asked about the positive news about the efficacy of Pfizer-BioNTech and Modern vaccines in recent days, the AIIMS director added: “This is a very interesting moment. The announcements from the two pharmaceutical companies are encouraging. There are many obstacles. The first is crossed. “
US pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech said their coronavirus vaccine was found to be 95% effective in a late-stage trial, even in people over 65.
In the phase 3 trial, the vaccine protected people, ages 18 to older, against the deadly virus with at least one symptom. Of the 170 study subjects who developed Covid-19 with one symptom, 162 received placebo and only eight received the vaccine. And nine of the 10 severe cases of coronavirus were volunteers taking a placebo. The results were consistent between the ages of 18 and 85, race and ethnicity, the companies said.
Pfizer and BioNTech also said they have completed the phase 3 study of their BNT162b2 mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine candidate, meeting all major efficacy endpoints.
On the other hand, Moderna Inc said its experimental vaccine was 94.5% effective in preventing COVID-19 based on interim data from a late-stage clinical trial, becoming the second American company in a week to report results that far exceed expectations.
Additionally, the AIIMS director was joined by Dr. Ashish K Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, who said that two major advances in the Covid-19 vaccine occurred last week and said he was “excited, happy and delighted” by the developments.
“I have been very pleasantly surprised by what we are seeing with vaccines. Two or three weeks ago, I would have been happy with vaccines that are 60% effective, I didn’t dare to expect 70% and yet we have two vaccines, one from Moderna and one from Pfizer, which have proven to be 95% . percent cash. That’s amazing, “Jha said.
Regarding the availability of a possible Covid-19 vaccine, Guleria also added that the percentage of the population that will be inoculated will depend on the number of vaccines that obtain regulatory approval and the number of injections they are producing. “I won’t risk guessing. But I expect 30 to 40 percent of Indians to get vaccinated as soon as possible.”
“It is a very intelligent virus, it reaches the lungs before it is symptomatic and we have individuals who are asymptomatic and you can see patches on their lungs on CT scans directly. It really bypasses a person’s defense mechanism, which means that not only do they have the virus in their nose or throat, but it has entered their lungs directly. A virus that can do that and have varied presentations and cause such a systemic manifestation is something we must be careful of. It will stay for some time and we will have to live with it and control it, “concluded Dr. Guleria.
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