DNA Special: COVID vaccine approval is only beginning of several manufacturing challenges

In the last few days, you may have heard the good news about three coronavirus vaccines. However, we will talk about the problems that come after the vaccine will be invented.

The US pharma company Pfizer has claimed that its vaccine has met with a 95 per cent success rate in the last phase of vaccine trials. Now Pfizer will soon, in case of emergency, approve the use of the vaccine and if it gets the requisite approvals, as many as 5 crore doses of the vaccine could be ready by the end of this year and 130 crore doses of vaccine could be manufactured by the end of next year. It is being claimed that there are no major side effects in this vaccine and, on people above the age of 65 years, this vaccine has been 94 per cent successful.

A week ago, the Pfizer vaccine had yielded early results and was then claimed to have succeeded up to 90 per cent. That means the success rate of the vaccine has increased by 5 per cent in the results of the final phase that came a week later. It takes years to manufacture any vaccine, and you could say that manufacturing of the corona vaccine in such a short span time is a new record.

Two days ago, another US pharma company Moderna claimed to have more than 94 per cent success of its corona vaccine. This comes as a good news and with 95 per cent success, Pfizer is now at the forefront of the world. If a vaccine is effective up to 50 per cent, it is considered to be a great success and in case of emergency, such a vaccine is also approved. The market value of companies that make these vaccines is also increasing.

The research for COVID-19 vaccines is continuing across the world. However, the major challenge is to reach about 750 million people around the world.

According to experts, the vaccine by US company Nova Vax uses liver oil, particular tree bark and about 500 different things. However, other pharma companies have not given any information about their vaccine.

A special type of tree bark is used to make the vaccine, and it has the qualities that strengthen the immunity system. These trees are found in South America and the area is still reeling under drought. Another problem is that this bark can be removed only during some months of the year.

-The use of shark liver oil in the vaccine is the next major challenge. Environmentalists fear that a large number of sharks will now be hunted to make the vaccine and many species of sharks will become extinct.

Vaccines are stored I vials that are prepared from Borosilicate glass. These can withstand higher temperatures than normal glass. Therefore, as many as 20 crore viles are needed for vaccines for the entire world. This means the production of viles has to be increased manifolds and this too poses a greater challenge.

-So far, it was being considered a challenge to store the Pfizer vaccine at a temperature of minus 70 °c. However, another US company, Moderna, has claimed that its vaccine may store at ordinary fridge temperatures.

Also, to protect the vaccine for 6 months, it requires a temperature of only minus 20 degrees. That means the problem of storing the vaccine has been solved. However, millions of vaccines are being made. The process of storing it and then delivering it to the people in a proper way will be very complicated and this can take a long time.

According to an estimate, the total amount of coronavirus worldwide is about 8 ml. On average, the spoon has a capacity of about 6 ML. And more than 56 million people in the world have been infected with just more than one teaspoon of the coronavirus.

Matt Parker, a mathematician from Australia, has made these estimates based on a formula made by him. First, he discovered how much of the coronavirus made people become infected. He then took a figure of at least 3 million people being infected every day around the world.

Based on this formula, Matt Parker has calculated the amount of coronavirus in the body of infected people from Covid-19 in the world. The size of the coronavirus is so small that you cannot see it with your naked eyes. The size of a human cell is about 100 micrometers. This is almost equal to the width of a strand of hair found on our head. The size of human cells is 10 million times larger than the size of the COVID-19 virus.

According to Matt Parker, coronavirus is actually like a kind of computer code that creates disturbances in human systems.