This Covid season has been one of trepidation and fear. We are shocked to hear death news of our relatives and friends who have passed away due to this virus attack in our country and around the world.
Considering the days of Spanish flu virus in 1920s. Those days we never had the vaccines for virus. But in the modern days we have vaccines. Interesting research is happening around the world.
The picture on the right gives the popular vaccines that are in use around the world to fight the Covid 19 virus, since Dec 2020.
A ribonucleic acid vaccine or messenger RNA vaccine is a type of vaccine that uses a copy of the genetic material from a natural molecule called messenger RNA to produce an immune response - wikipedia.
"The mRNA vaccine revolution is just beginning | WIRED UK" click here
Covishield vaccine (from Oxford AstraZeneca) uses a virus of another disease, a flu virus, not exactly Covid 19 virus to trigger an immune response from the human body. Flu virus still kills about 300,000 people globally every year. This is the virus vector approach.
Covaxin vaccine used in India is got from weakened Covid 19 viruses (got from horse blood, horses were given mild doses of Covid 19 vaccine earlier to generate antibodies and the almost dead virus). This is the active approach
Messenger Ribonucleicacid (mRNA) vaccines use biotechnology tools to trigger body responses against the Cobid 19 virus without allowing any virus vector or almost dead virus to enter the body. This is an indirect approach that fools the human body using genetic materials like RNA into generating antibodies to achieve necessary immunity.
While ordinary serum based (viral vector or almost dead virii) vaccines give immunity only for specific diseases, mRNA vaccines can be used to generate immunity for a general class of virus. That is a great promise in treating a large class of viral diseases like flu, HIV etc .
This technology which is being researched and tested out in many labs across the world for finding a cure to HIV (a more complex virus than Covid 19) has been for the first time tested on people for immunity against Covid 19 and is found to give upto 90% immunity for 1 dose and 95% for 2 doses.
Katalin Kariko, pictured here, working at the University of Pennysylvania, is one of the global experts on the mRNA vaccine. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, both of mRNA origin, have come out of the efforts of Katalin's team to create a vaccine for HIV ( a more complex protein). Hope the mRNA technology is made available to the people of the world in the times of Covid. If the mRNA technology based vaccine is made available to the people of the world, many people will benefit.
The other great benefit of mRNA vaccines is the speed at which this can be manufactured compared to the other serum based or viral vector based vaccines. This is a real blessing in times of pandemic like the one we are experiencing now.
Going back in history, the author recollects the days of his father, in Mavelikara, Kerala, India around 1918, when the Spanish flu virus hit the world and in a span
of nine years up to 1927, killed almost 70 million people in the world
(4.7% of the world population of 1500 million then.). He is still alive
at 97, (he was not born when the Spanish flu first hit in 1918) and recollects his mother recounting, how during those days when there were no modern communication
or means of transportation, science technology not having developed
so much, how they have suffered and grieved loss of their loved ones. How critical the situation would have been then ?
If
we extrapolate the figure of 4.7% casualty to the present global population of 7800
million, it translates to 367 million people. But globally we are at present at just 3.8 million. God forbid there be more deaths. But the figure is very shocking. Given that the vaccination rates are increasing and the emergence of variants has not been that damaging, we still see a glimmer of hope in the near future when things would be in control.
George..
No comments:
Post a Comment