Since the start of the pandemic, pharmaceutical companies have been working round the clock to establish a vaccine.
The outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic has left scientists in a race against time to develop a vaccine for the virus, which originated in Wuhan province of China. Majority of the vaccines being developed are still in preclinic stage of trials. The preclinic stage is whereby the vaccine is still being administered to animals to examine how they react. A couple of vaccines have been able to reach the clinical stage where it is administered on humans. A lot of auspicious signs are being shown in Phase 3 of the trials. This phase tests for the vaccine’s effectiveness and tries to weed out any adverse reactions as the dosage is administered to hundreds of thousands of volunteers.
Five companies developing the vaccines have started recruiting and administering, and they include; AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. The vaccine being developed from a weakened adoption of the common cold virus, the adenovirus;
- Sinovac Biotech, a Beijing based company which is working with a vaccine, made up of an inactivated version of the SARS-CoV-2 to develop a vaccine called PiCoVacc;
- Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from the US developing the mRNA-1273;
- Cansino Biologics amalgamating with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology developing a vaccine using a weakened adenovirus;
- Others are Chinese owned Sinopharm, and Pfizer together with German BioNtech with Fosun.
- Johnson & Johnson Janssen completes the five.
AstraZeneca, which was up until recently showing very promising results in their tests being conducted, had to halt the process as one participant in the UK exhibited noteworthy adverse reaction. A spokesperson for the company stated that it was a normal procedure to put a pause whenever they encounter any participant who exhibits any serious adverse reaction as a safety measure.
According to an anonymous source with information on the matter, the participant is expected to recover quickly. This has also caused a chain reaction where the other candidates are counter checking to establish any reaction after witnessing AstraZeneca being the first company to put the process on hold.