Coronavirus Vaccine India: Zyadus Cadila's COVID-19 vaccine may be available by early 2021, suggests report

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread at an alarming rate across the globe, India has crossed the toll of 1 million COVID-19 cases as of now, becoming the world’s third worst-hit nation by the highly infectious contagion. Infact, a record-breaking number of 34,956 coronavirus positive cases were reported yesterday, taking the total number of infections in the country past the 10 lakh mark. Meanwhile, scientists and medical experts are working round the clock to develop vaccine fit for human use in order to contain the highly infectious contagion.

While globally, three vaccine candidates have entered the last phase of clinical trials in the battle against novel coronavirus, India too is making strides in developing a vaccine for coronavirus. As of now, there are two indigenous vaccines which are already in Phase I/II of clinical trials, namely Covaxin (being developed by Bharat Biotech) and ZyCov-D (being developed by Zydus Cadila).

Soon after the Phase I trials of Covaxin started in 12 medical institutes across India (including AIIMS Delhi and Patna), India’s second vaccine candidate Zydus Cadila's novel ZyCoV-D also received approval from the authorities for commencing Phase I/II trails. The human trials of Zydus’s plasmid DNA vaccine have already begun on Wednesday in various trials centres across the nation. It is being reported that thousands of volunteers will take part in the preliminary trials.

As per the reports, the vaccine candidate ZyCov-D, which was developed by the Vaccine Technology Centre in Ahmedabad, showed significant immune system response in its pre-clinical trials which was done on rabbits, rats, mice and guinea pigs to test the safety and efficacy of the vaccine candidate.

To develop the potential vaccine, the company made use of two different approaches--the first was using the viral protein of the coronavirus to trigger an immune response in the body and another one was to use live attenuated recombinant measles virus to produce a vaccine for COVID-19. They eventually finalised the plasmid DNA vaccine candidate.

Shedding more light on the tentative date of the availability of the vaccine for the general public, Pankaj Patel, who is the Chairman of Zydus Cadila, said that vaccine candidate for the novel coronavirus may be ready for launch in the early 2021. Speaking to Moneycontrol, Mr Patel shared, “We are expecting the phase 1 and phase 2 studies to be completed in 3 months."