COVID-19 Vaccines and Vaccination

Vaccines are life-saving immune biologicals. COVID-19 vaccines are administered into the body to attain the acquired immunity against the disease-causing virus 2019nCoV. The primary incentive of COVID-19 vaccines is to prevent symptomatic illness as well as severe illness too. Getting vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccines will decrease the risk as well as the duration of 2019nCoV infection, i.e., a decline in mortality, as proved in an experimental study conducted at the European Institute of oncology by Italian scientists. Many vaccine candidates are in phase III and phase IV trials with almost 95% efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections. According to official records from the national health agencies, 878.16 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered to the public as of April 16th, 2021, and 6.31 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been delivered worldwide as of October 2nd, 2021. This chapter reviews the number of vaccines candidates’ ongoing, approved, and indispensable role played by the Indian government in vaccine supply to the global market. 

Keywords: AstraZeneca SKBio, Covaxin, Covishield AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Sputnik-V.