"Race for the Vaccine"

 

      The world is not in a good shape right now, the fear of the virus, and the harm that it has caused is unquestionable. All the eyes are on the vaccine that is in the process of being made up in labs, which no-one knows when it will reach us. It's like the ‘Space Race’, every country wants to be the first to create the vaccine currently, there are more than 100 candidates/industries in this race. The majority of them are in North America constituting almost half of the candidates i.e. 44 followed by China with 17 candidates, almost all of the candidates are of the private sectors. There are a lot of misconceptions regarding the vaccine which through this article I will address. Firstly, before getting to know about the vaccine, I will briefly address the working of the virus which will later help you understand the working of the vaccine.

      This virus or for that regard any such virus is very hard to kill because of their very simple design. They are basically little vehicles that carry instructions on how to make more copies of themselves. When they enter a human body they enter these instructions into our cells and hijack our cellular machinery into creating more copies of them. Then they travel into the whole body infecting and damaging more and more cells, as a result, we feel sick and face the well known Covid-19 symptoms. But we are not helpless, the cells in our immune systems will find the intruder and identify putting up a marker onto it, this marker distinguishes the infected cell from our normal human cells, playing a vital role in eliminating the virus. This ‘marker’ is called an ‘Antigen’, then our immune cells travel through the whole body finding the cells carrying this Antigen tag and destroying such cells. Our body also produces little molecules called ‘Antibodies’ which stick to that Antigen tagging itself to the infected cells which bring the situation under control. The problem is from the day we are infected, this coping mechanism of our body usually takes 2 weeks to activate itself, during this time the virus does the damage it was supposed to do. Doctors today treat the COVID patients with ‘Antibodies’, injecting them with antibodies that are made in labs or from the recovered patient's blood. So now we know how to fight the virus after getting infected, but this only makes the virus ‘less deadly’. It does not help the individual from getting infected in the first place and doesn’t stop them from infecting others. The only way to end this Covid-19 pandemic is by reaching the term known as “Herd Immunity”.

                       

        The concept goes like this, more and more people become immune so that the spreading of the virus slows down eventually minimizing the risk of getting infected anymore. There are only two ways of reaching ‘Herd Immunity’, firstly by more and more people getting infected and then recovering or by creating a vaccine to make more and more people immune. According to scientists, 60% of the World’s population needs to be immune if we wish to end this Pandemic. The common misconception about a vaccine is that a vaccine is needed for the infected patients in the hospital; instead, a vaccine is for ‘Us’ the uninfected people. The vaccine contains a smaller weaker version of the virus which is unable to reproduce itself when injected into our body the body immediately suspects the intruder and destroys it before further damage is caused. This small fake infection makes the body ready for the actual virus when it might enter a patient and when it does, our body will already know what the virus looks like and how it behaves. Thus, a vaccine is for the non-infected people similar to the way we feed polio vaccines to small children before getting infected not after. The good thing to know here is that the vaccine for Covid-19 maybe invented already but it will not come out until the vaccine goes through the vaccine validation time.

          The first Covid-19 vaccine test was conducted on a woman on 16^th March 2020 and this vaccine was created in a record-breaking 65 day time period. For a vaccine to be valid to come out for the world it has to go through 3 phases. In ‘Phase one’ the vaccine is given to a group of few people and then there is a waiting period of a few months to see if there are any side effects on the candidates. In ‘Phase Two’ the vaccine is then given to a group of 100’s of people and again there is a waiting period of a few months looking for any side effects. Finally, in ‘Phase three’ the vaccine is given to groups of 1000’s of people and again there is a waiting of a few months. For a working vaccine of Covid-19 to come out the validation time is estimated for almost 18 months. I know it is a long time and that is the problem we don’t have time, people are dying daily. But we cannot outrun or ignore this testing period, because our history says so. There were few incidents in the past for example in world war where vaccines were brought out to people before completing the test period and this resulted in side effects and people dying due to vaccines. So ending this on a strong note there is a possibility that the vaccine for Covid-19 is already invented, it is just in one of the 3 phases of trial. Until the vaccine comes out we have to follow the rules and protocols and help the people in need, because ‘Hope is not lost yet’. Thank you!