HomeNewsPodcastCoronavirus Essential podcast | Health ministry aims to conduct 10 lakh tests per day; Oxford vaccine showing good progress, says AstraZeneca

Coronavirus Essential podcast | Health ministry aims to conduct 10 lakh tests per day; Oxford vaccine showing good progress, says AstraZeneca

Tune in to the Coronavirus Essential podcast with Sakshi Batra for all the top updates on the ongoing pandemic.

July 30, 2020 / 19:19 IST
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Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan said on July 30 that India is currently conducting around five lakh COVID-19 tests per day, and the ministry is aiming to double the number within the next two months.

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In the vaccine front, the UK pharma company AstraZeneca said that good data was coming from phase III of their vaccine trials. The company had developed the vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford and has already made several deals with countries to make more than 2 billion doses of the vaccine.

Tune in to the Coronavirus Essential podcast with Sakshi Batra for all the top updates on the ongoing pandemic.

COVID-19 Vaccine
Frequently Asked Questions

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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.
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first published: Jul 30, 2020 07:19 pm

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