#covid vaccine india

[reasonsforhope]

India was able to save more than 3.4 million lives by undertaking a nationwide Covid-19 vaccination campaign at an unprecedented scale, according to a Stanford University report.

The campaign also yielded a positive economic impact by preventing a loss of $18.3 billion, the working paper by Stanford University and Institute for Competitiveness titled 'Healing the Economy: Estimating the Economic Impact on India's Vaccination and Related Issues' released by Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday suggested.

According to the Stanford report, the direct and total impact of vaccination varied from about $ 1.03 billion to $ 2.58 billion if minimum wages are considered within the age distribution category.

“The same, however, varied from about $3.49 billion to $ 8.7 billion if GDP per person employed (constant) is considered. The cumulative lifetime earnings of the lives saved through vaccination (in the working age group) rolled up to $ 21.5 billion. Moreover, since vaccination also saved the lives of the elderly, this indirectly helped prevent the health infrastructure from getting overwhelmed and thereby allowing for a more judicious use of the existing health infrastructure,” the report suggested.

Mandaviya said much before Covid-19 was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in January 2020, processes and structures to focus dedicatedly on various facets of the pandemic management were put in place...

The Stanford working paper refers to a Lancet modelling study which estimated that in India around 3.4 million deaths were prevented by vaccination in the year 2021, an estimate based on officially reported deaths in India.

The paper also highlighted the impact of the lockdown and referred to the health ministry’s statistical analysis that the Covid-19 tally could have reached about two lakh (0.2 million) without lockdown by April 11, 2020.

Due to lockdown measures, the actual cases only went up to about 7,500 by April 11, 2020, making a case for the lockdown stronger."

-via Times of India, 2/25/23

[todayworldnews2k21]

What Is A Tripledemic? Lookout For These Three Viruses That Cause Severe Respiratory Health Issues

As the world continues to navigate post-pandemic life, new health challenges are emerging, particularly with the onset of winter. One of the rising concerns is the tripledemic, a term that has been coined to describe the simultaneous surge of three respiratory viruses—COVID-19, influenza (flu), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). These viruses have the potential to overwhelm healthcare systems…

[bhaskarlive]

India reported 908 new Covid cases, 2 deaths between June and July: WHO 

India has witnessed 908 new Covid-19 cases, and two deaths between June and July this year, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report on Wednesday.

The latest Covid epidemiological update by the UN body showed that between June 24 to July 21, an average of 17,358 specimens were tested for SARS-CoV-2 every week across 85 countries.

Source: bhaskarlive.in

[nish1986]

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[dpimarketreports]

“Global Influenza Vaccines Market and Forecasts 2024 – 2032” presents an in-depth assessment of the global influenza vaccines market dynamics, opportunities, future road map, competitive landscape and discusses major trends. The report offers the most up-to-date industry data on the actual market situation and future outlook in the global influenza vaccines market. The report also provides up-to-date historical market size data for the period 2018 – 2023 and an illustrative forecast to 2032 covering key market aspects like market value, volume analysis, and trends for influenza vaccines globally.

[innonurse]

A new web app for the COVID-19 immune antibody helps in vaccine scheduling

- By InnoNurse Staff -

With SARS-COV-2 infection rates on the rise once more, you might be wondering if you should receive a COVID-19 vaccination booster shot. Yale physicians have created a tool to assist in answering these questions.

Read more at Yale University

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Other recent news and insights

Chefaa receives a $5.25 million budget boost to expand health-tech services throughout Saudi Arabia (Tech in Africa)

India: Peptris, an AI-powered drug discovery startup, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding (The Financial Express)

[memyself024]

More Than Half of People in the United States Do Not Want the New Covid Vaccine: According to a Survey

[chawsl]

[suryaprabha001]

Vaccination In Kothrud | Suryaprabha Nursing Home

If you're looking for a proper immunisation and vaccination in Kothrud, go to Suryaprabha Nursing Home.

[shaktiknowledgeblog]

booster dose | booster dose in india | Covid 19 Vaccine | Covid 19 | healthy | who | Corona cases | coronavirus covid 19 india

WHO said this big thing about booster dose, know what is the opinion of the expert? Booster Dose: Corona cases are continuously increasing in the country. In such a situation, there is a continuous debate about booster doses. In such a situation, do you know from experts whether you can take a booster dose again and again? Image Source: WHO who_booster_dose Corona cases are continuously…

[drravindersinghrao]

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[covid-safer-hotties]

Nasal COVID-19 vaccine halts transmission - Published July 31, 2024

Study in hamsters indicates vaccines targeting nose, mouth may be key to controlling spread of respiratory infections

A nasal COVID-19 vaccine blocks transmission of the virus, according to an animal study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings suggest that vaccines delivered directly to the nose or mouth could play a critical role in containing the spread of respiratory infections.

The lightning-fast development of COVID-19 vaccines just months after the virus appeared was a triumph of modern science and saved millions of lives. But for all the good they did in reducing illnesses and deaths, the shots were unable to end the pandemic because of one notable weakness: They couldn’t stop the spread of the virus.

A new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that next-generation vaccines that target the virus’s points of entry — the nose and mouth — may be able to do what traditional shots cannot: contain the spread of respiratory infections and prevent transmission. Using a nasal COVID-19 vaccine based on Washington University technology, approved for use in India and licensed to Ocugen for further development in the U.S., the researchers showed that vaccinated hamsters that developed infections did not pass the virus on to others, breaking the cycle of transmission. In contrast, an approved COVID-19 vaccine that is injected failed to prevent the spread of the virus.

The findings, published July 31 in Science Advances, provide further evidence that so-called mucosal vaccines sprayed into the nose or dropped into the mouth may be the key to controlling respiratory infections such as influenza and COVID-19 that continue to circulate and cause significant illness and death.

“To prevent transmission, you need to keep the amount of virus in the upper airways low,” said senior author Jacco Boon, PhD, a professor of medicine, of molecular microbiology and of pathology & immunology. “The less virus that is there to begin with, the less likely you are to infect someone else if you cough or sneeze or even just breathe on them. This study shows that mucosal vaccines are superior to injected vaccines in terms of limiting viral replication in the upper airways and preventing spread to the next individual. In an epidemic or pandemic situation, this is the kind of vaccine you’re going to want.”

Developing vaccines that can control virus levels in the nose has proven challenging. Viruses such as influenza virus, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) multiply rapidly in the nose and spread from person to person within a few days of initial exposure. Traditional injectable vaccines generate immune responses that can take a week to build to full strength and are much less potent in the nose than in the bloodstream, leaving the nose relatively unprotected against a fast-multiplying, fast-spreading virus.

In principle, a vaccine sprayed or dropped directly into the nose or mouth could limit viral reproduction and thereby reduce transmission by eliciting an immune response right where it’s needed most. But gathering evidence that mucosal vaccines actually do reduce transmission has proven tricky. Animal models of transmission are not well-established, and tracking person-to-person transmission is fiendishly complicated, given the number and variety of encounters a typical person has on any given day.

For this study, Boon and colleagues developed and validated a model for community transmission using hamsters and then used it to assess the effect of mucosal vaccination on the spread of SARS-CoV-2. (Unlike mice, hamsters are naturally susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2, making them the ideal laboratory animals for a transmission study.)

The researchers immunized groups of hamsters with laboratory versions of approved COVID-19 vaccines: the nasal iNCOVACC used in India or the injected Pfizer vaccine. For comparison, some hamsters were not immunized. After giving the vaccinated hamsters a few weeks for their immune responses to fully mature, the researchers infected other hamsters with SARS-CoV-2 and then placed the immunized hamsters with the infected hamsters for eight hours. This first step of the experiment mimics the experience of vaccinated people who are exposed to a person with COVID-19.

After spending eight hours rubbing shoulders with infected hamsters, most of the vaccinated animals became infected. Virus was found in the noses and lungs of 12 of 14 (86%) hamsters that had received the nasal vaccine, and 15 of 16 (94%) hamsters that had received the injected vaccine. Importantly, while most animals in both groups were infected, they weren’t infected to the same degree. Hamsters that had been nasally immunized had virus levels in the airways 100 to 100,000 times lower than those that had received the shot or had not been vaccinated. The study did not assess the animals’ health, but previous studies have shown that both vaccines reduce the likelihood of severe illness and death from COVID-19.

The second step of the experiment yielded even more striking results. The researchers took vaccinated hamsters that subsequently developed infections and placed them with healthy vaccinated and unvaccinated hamsters for eight hours to model transmission of virus from a vaccinated person to others.

None of the hamsters that were exposed to nasally vaccinated hamsters became infected, regardless of whether the recipient hamster had been vaccinated or not. In contrast, roughly half of the hamsters that were exposed to hamsters vaccinated by injection became infected — again, regardless of the recipient’s immunization status. In other words, vaccination through the nose — but not by injection — broke the cycle of transmission.

These data, Boon said, could be important as the world prepares for the possibility that avian influenza, currently causing an outbreak in dairy cows, might adapt to humans and trigger a flu epidemic. An injectable vaccine for avian influenza already exists, and a team of researchers at Washington University is working toward a nasal vaccine for avian influenza. That team includes Boon and co-author Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine and one of the inventors of the nasal vaccine technology used in this paper.

“Mucosal vaccines are the future of vaccines for respiratory infections,” Boon said. “Historically, developing such vaccines has been challenging. There’s still so much we don’t know about the kind of immune response we need and how to elicit it. I think we’re going to see a lot of very exciting research in the next few years that could lead to big improvements in vaccines for respiratory infections.”

Study linked in the first link!

[timetravellingkitty]

revisiting the second wave of covid 19 in india reminded me how much I hate the usa those bitches were hoarding vaccines and patenting them while in india we had bodies floating down rivers, lack of oxygen tanks, not enough hospital beds. our government only didn't care because why would modi of all people give a fuck but I love how the united shithole of america manages to make everything worse. I don't think I'll ever be able to convey the totality of the death toll. so many of us were dying left right and centre. my own grandfather almost died in a crowded hospital, which was one of many that were running short of oxygen tanks yankees had enough vaccines to give to their citizens twice over but we're the sensitive ones girl fuck you and your america

[mariacallous]

In Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel The Dark Forest—part of the popular Three-Body Problem series recently serialized by Netflix—humanity is faced with the prospect of an alien invasion. The extraterrestrials are on their way to conquer Earth but are still light years away; humanity has hundreds of years to prepare for their hostile arrival.

Amid a need to bolster defense spending globally and, crucially, to foster innovation across the entire world, representatives of the global south make a proposal at the United Nations. Developing countries demand a universal waiver of intellectual property protections on inventions relevant to defense to enable them to develop their own technologies and contribute to planetary fortification. In Liu’s story, the global south’s call meets staunch opposition from wealthier states, which veto the proposal. Although set in an imagined future, Liu’s point resonates clearly in our own time.

The most recent parallel is the global vaccine hoarding that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the height of the emergency, rich countries bought up and hoarded COVID-19 vaccine supplies, which left many developing countries unable to obtain sufficient vaccines during 2021-22. Even when they arrived, donations of leftover doses from high-income countries were often too close to their expiration dates for developing countries to actually use them.

Global south states sought to build up their own secure vaccine production capacity but were stymied. Critically, vaccine manufacturers, such as Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, refused to share IP-protected technology with World Health Organization (WHO) initiatives, such as C-TAP and the mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub, that were attempting to create a network of distributed vaccine production. It is estimated that such hoarding cost more than 1 million lives in developing states.

Remarkably, the global south saw this coming. Even before a single COVID-19 vaccine had been administered, developing countries accurately anticipated that they would be left at the back of the line for supplies. Burned by the experience of HIV/AIDS medicine shortages in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the global south predicted similar inequities occurring during the COVID-19 crisis—and they tried to act to prevent this.

In October 2020, this foresight motivated developing countries, led by South Africa and India at the World Trade Organization (WTO), to propose an international waiver of IP protections—known as a TRIPS waiver—on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and other health technologies. Much as in Liu’s story, the global north firmly rejected the proposal, leading to a delayed and watered-down WTO decision in June 2022 that I, and other academic experts, argued was too little, too late.

Crucially, we can observe the same pattern emerging yet again in the current negotiations over the WHO Pandemic Accord. Just like Liu’s vision of humanity preparing for an inevitable alien invasion but unwilling to share technologies globally, the world remains stuck in a doom loop. Another pandemic is foreseeable. A new treaty could provide a way for the international community to learn the lessons of COVID-19 and boost pandemic preparedness. Yet the world is making the same mistakes all over again.

Given the failures of the WTO process, experienced commentators such as Ellen ‘t Hoen anticipated that shifting the debate to WHO could help ensure that similar inequalities do not arise during the next pandemic. Many hoped that WHO, with its overriding focus on global health, would be a more receptive forum to the global south’s equity concerns than the WTO, which prioritizes IP via TRIPS, one of its foundational 1995 agreements.

However, thus far, the negotiations have been hampered by the same issue that blighted the WTO TRIPS waiver process: Rich states are unwilling to agree to any potential pandemic-related limitation of international IP rights or to expand IP flexibilities to include nonvoluntary options such as a mechanism for the compulsory licensing of trade secrets on pharmaceutical manufacturing processes needed for scaling up production of pandemic products.

Broadly speaking, developing countries want terms that would mandate technology transfer of key health technologies, such as vaccines, to the global south. Rich countries decry this suggestion, claiming it could undermine IP rights.

Hence, wealthy nations are balking at the use of progressive language on the compulsory use of IP in Article 11 of the draft accord. Instead, the U.S. government emphasizes supporting voluntary agreements—without acknowledging that the voluntary systems, including COVAX, failed to provide for the needs of citizens in many global south countries during the COVID-19 era.

In these negotiations, several key parties, such as the European Union and the United Kingdom, argue that a WHO treaty cannot deal with IP issues because that would equate to trespassing on rules that the WTO created. This back-and-forth between the WTO and WHO reflects an asymmetric power game that the global south is not well placed to win.

With no movement on IP, developing countries seem less willing to agree on a rare point of leverage, namely, the terms of Article 12, which addresses pathogen access and benefit-sharing. Put simply, developing countries are concerned that if they agree to terms on restriction-free sharing of pathogens with pandemic potential, without reciprocal guarantees of technology-sharing and health product distribution, they will be left at the back of the line again in the next pandemic.

Wealthy countries may be succeeding at reducing this leverage; recent news reports suggest that detailed provisions on pathogen-sharing may be shifted to a separate instrument.

It seems that for rich states, property is sacrosanct; global health is not. Yet, rather than property, it is worth recalling that patents were originally considered to be a form of state-granted privilege. In the 19th century, industrial states viewed IP not as an instrument of free trade but rather as a form of trade protectionism.

This idea of IP as protectionist privilege remains a more accurate description of what global IP law is intended to achieve. Much as in Liu’s novel, the stark reality is that there is no circumstance—not a new pandemic, not even an alien invasion—in which the global north would be willing to give up its protectionist privileges by sharing its technology with the global south.

With the WTO in decline and the WHO multilateral process in trouble, the global south may have to examine alternative options for building up pandemic preparedness. Intriguingly, Netflix’s 3 Body Problem envisages this. Unlike in the book, on TV the U.N. resolution for open technology-sharing is never even proposed.

Instead, a Mexican national who happens to be the chief scientific officer of a cutting-edge nanotech company becomes frustrated by Western corporate-military obstructionism and decides to upload all her London-based employer’s source code and trade secrets to open-source platforms with the aim of assisting developing countries to produce the technology. She even includes a downloadable guide on how to copy the functionality of the technology while avoiding IP infringement.

This fictional feint away from the multilateral forum and toward individual decision-making parallels real-world moves toward open-source biotech. This approach has been pioneered by Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi of Baylor University, who created the patent-free COVID-19 vaccine Corbevax. They successfully transferred the vaccine technology openly to producers in Botswana and India. Meanwhile, the WHO mRNA hub at Afrigen in South Africa led by Petro Terblanche is encouraging open south-south collaboration on new vaccine technologies.

If the Pandemic Accord negotiations falter before the World Health Assembly begins on May 27 or they fail to produce a just treaty, efforts such as these will take on even greater importance. An inequitable Pandemic Accord will signal that Liu was right: The global north will continue to hoard technologies even in the face of looming Armageddon, and south-south collaboration on producing health technologies may be the only way forward for enhancing global pandemic preparedness.