First batch of 94,000 doses of Covishield vaccine reaches Madhya Pradesh

The batch of the vaccine doses arrived at the Raja Bhoj Airport in a scheduled flight from Mumbai, said the official of the Public Relations Department.

PTI

January 13, 2021 / 03:20 PM IST

(Source: Reuters)

The first consignment of about 94,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine reached the Bhopal airport in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday, a state government official said.

The batch of the vaccine doses arrived at the Raja Bhoj Airport in a scheduled flight from Mumbai, said the official of the Public Relations Department.

"About 94,000 vials of the vaccine in different boxes have arrived in Bhopal," he said.

He said the insulated van of the state Health department transported these boxes of the doses to the State Vaccine Centre.

These doses would be dispatched to eight districts from Bhopal under the supervision of officials, the official said.

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.

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