With the dreadful year 2020 coming to an end today, the world and all of humanity has quite a few reasons to rejoice! A number of companies have come out with vaccines, which have shown over 95% efficacy against the COVID-19 Novel Corona Virus. Though the panic of there being the mutated new strains of the virus spreading in a number of countries, India has seen a great reduction and control over the spread of the Virus. The steps taken by the Central as well as respective state governments and especially the healthcare authorities and frontline workers, has gone a long way in controlling the spread of the Virus! After the vaccines were announced by a number of companies, many countries like the UK, USA, Bahrain and Canada, approved their emergency use authorisation and the vaccination drives have begun in those countries!

Companies like Pfizer, Moderna and Serum Institute of India, applied for Emergency Use Authorisation for their vaccines, to the Indian government and we had heard that these requests had been placed before a panel of experts for consideration! Now, we have some great news in this regard! Recently, the UK approved the usage of the COVID-19 vaccine developed jointly by the Oxford University and AstraZeneca! The Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi - Dr. Randeep Guleria, has stated that this approval for the Oxford vaccine in the UK, is a "big step forward"! He also added that India will have this vaccine, within days! This Oxford vaccine became the second vaccine to be approved for use in the UK, following the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as Moderna Inc.'s vaccine became the second such in the USA!

Dr. Guleria said, "This is very good news that AstraZeneca got approval for its vaccine by UK regulatory authorities. They have robust data and in India, the same vaccine is being developed by the Serum Institute of India. This is a big step forward not only for India but many parts of the world." He further added, "This vaccine can be stored at two to eight degrees centigrade. Therefore, it would be easy to store and for transportation. Storage can be done using a simple fridge than what is required in the Pfizer vaccine, of minus 70 degrees centigrade!" Dr. Guleria also reassured that India is planning to rollout the COVID-19 vaccines for a large part of the country and therefore the vaccine will be available in our country, in the near future. Just recently, SII's CEO - Adar Poonawalla had revealed that the company has already stockpiled close to 50 million doses of the Covishield vaccine and would be ready to rollout, almost immediately, if the government approves it! Stay tuned for updates...