COVID-19 vaccination | US to send 20 million AstraZeneca doses to India: Report

Earlier reports said the US had 10 million of the vaccine doses in stock and was expected to manufacture another 50 million by June.

Moneycontrol News

April 30, 2021 / 09:03 AM IST

The agreement is for 20 million AstraZeneca doses

The United States will send 20 million doses of its spare AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to India. It has also agreed to divert ‘sufficient’ Millipore filters to India so that the country can boost domestic production of up to 18 million more doses of the vaccine.

Further, the US will be sending 17 oxygen generator plants and 20,000 doses of Remdesivir in its first tranche of supplies expected over this week and the next, The Economic Times reported.

The agreement is for 20 million AstraZeneca doses, but a timeline is “yet to be specified”, sources told the paper.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

Follow our LIVE Updates on the coronavirus pandemic here

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show