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Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has showed promising result in the first stage of trials and Serum Institute of India will start human trials in India of the Oxford vaccine and also manufacture 1 Billion doses of the same vaccine if everything goes well.

The world had been waiting for a Covid-19 vaccine for quite a while now. There has been no good news in the recent past, but when the news of the Oxford university vaccine broke out I gave everyone around the world a hope. Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine showed promising results in the first phase of trials. It is one among the 23 vaccine candidates around the world. Most of them are in the human trials stage and that is good news for us all.

The Serum Institute of India has also partnered with AstraZeneca to produce nearly 1 billion doses of the vaccine. The institute is first going to start by conducting human trials in India. There is still some approvals and paperwork to go through but if all goes well India might also manufacture the said vaccine.

Adar Poonawala who is the CEO of the Serum Institute of India also mentioned that the human trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are going to be conducted in India, and these trials are going to start in the month of August. The human trials will be conducted for more than 1500 people in India. He also mentioned that if the vaccine gets through, the world can have a vaccine by the end of this year and vaccine can be manufactured in India as well.

AstraZeneca who is a part in developing the vaccine had already said that they would manufacture over 2 billion doses of the vaccine and now with Serum institute of India in the picture with 1 billion more, we have 3 billion doses of vaccine manufactured.

Earlier the Serum Institute of India has said that they will manufacture a vaccine without the approval of the government, but now after the results of human trials they are ready to wait for governments approval and also for the final phase of human trials which is the most important one where thousands of people volunteer from around the well to study the impact of vaccine on the immune system of an individual depending on the race, color, culture, ethnicity, gender and as well as age.

The vaccine developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca has a name too- AZD1222. This vaccine has completed its 2nd phase of trials and has shown promising result. Though the trial was in UK and only had volunteers from 18-55 age groups. It stills showed promising results and has now moved to the higher phase in which human trials will be done on large scales with thousands of people around the world. As Covid-19 is more risky for the ones above 55, this phase of human trial will also see that every age group is present.

The vaccine uses a harmless for of the virus SARS-Cov-2, which is the virus that has caused Covid-19. This vaccine has a percentage of the virus for the immune system as target practice to fight the virus and infection in the future.

The vaccine till now has been tested on more than 1000 volunteers and the results and data has been quite promising. We just hope that the next phase also gives us promising results and we have a vaccine by the end of the year like the experts say.

By Deepika Agarwal