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HomeNewscoronavirusCoronavirus wrap July 20: Oxford vaccine shows promise; IndiGo to lay off 10% of its workforce

Coronavirus wrap July 20: Oxford vaccine shows promise; IndiGo to lay off 10% of its workforce

Globally, more than 1.44 crore infections and over 6.05 lakh deaths have been reported due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

July 20, 2020 / 21:16 IST
Representative Image

Representative Image

India has recorded over 11.1 lakh cases of the novel coronavirus and 27,497 deaths, according to the Union Health Ministry's latest update.

Of these, 3,90,459 are active cases while 7,00,086 have recovered.

Maharashtra has reported the highest number of infections, followed by Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

Globally, more than 1.44 crore infections and over 6.05 lakh deaths have been reported due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Here are all the latest updates:

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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>> Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine showed an acceptable safety profile in a study released in Lancet, news agency Reuters reported.

>> IndiGo said that it has decided to lay off 10 percent of its workforce due to the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

>> West Bengal has decided to impose a two-day lockdown every week to curb the spread of COVID-19 infections in the state. This week, the state government said that the lockdown will be enforced on July 23 and July 25.

>> Swedish life science company Enzymatica AB released the preliminary results of an in-vitro study that demonstrated that its mouth spray ColdZyme deactivates SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, by 98.3 percent.

>> India's debt-to-GDP to shoot up to 87.6 percent in FY21 in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, economists at State Bank of India said.

>> Kerala said that it has made arrangements to treat around 50,000 COVID-19 patients at a time, doubling the first line treatment centres to 56 as it battles the third wave of the infections that has pushed the active cases to over 7,000 in the last over two months.

>> Maharashtra minister Aslam Shaikh tested positive for the virus today. He is the fourth minister in Maharashtra cabinet to have been infected with the virus.

Moneycontrol News
first published: Jul 20, 2020 09:16 pm

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