{"id":105443,"date":"2020-11-11T12:45:56","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T07:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=105443"},"modified":"2020-11-11T14:23:38","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T08:53:38","slug":"pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-india-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/latest-news\/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-india-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine promising but delivery and price huge obstacles for India, says CMC Vellore professor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The wait for the coronavirus vaccine seemed to be finally over after<strong> <\/strong>U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and German Biotech company BioNTech claimed that their vaccine candidate had shown positive results and 90% effectiveness against Covid-19 based on late-stage trials. However, the news is not as exciting for Indians as the vaccine will be expensive and difficult to deliver to India, according to a CMC Vellore professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The scientists who developed the Pfizer\/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine are a Turkish-German power couple <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/twDtI8aYuf\">https:\/\/t.co\/twDtI8aYuf<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VuJfCKtb8E\">pic.twitter.com\/VuJfCKtb8E<\/a><\/p>&mdash; CNN (@CNN) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CNN\/status\/1326374360811249664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 11, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr Gagandeep Kang, who is known for his work with vaccines spoke to <em>Scroll.in<\/em> and said that since Pfizer&#8217;s coronavirus vaccine is an mRNA vaccine, it is going to be very expensive for India. &nbsp;Pfizer&nbsp;is yet to decide the price of its vaccine. He added that it would be difficult to deliver the vaccine to every nook and corner of the country in view of its super cold storage requirement, which is not available even in the premier hospitals across big cities. The vaccine needs to be stored at a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius (-94 F) or below. The requirement of ultra-low temperature for storage means the vaccine is unlikely to be available in the local pharmacies around us soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier the government had indicated that it was open to dialogue with the drugmaker for making vaccine available in the country. While addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary in the Union Ministry of health had said that the National Expert Group was in touch with both domestic and international manufacturers of the vaccines. The vaccine will have to be approved by&nbsp;Drug Controller General India before the mass production begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, Pfizer has said that it hopes to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021. If the vaccine candidate turns out to be a success, it would be supplied to other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Even though Pfizer has created a promising vaccine, the logistics for making it available to every Indian need to be worked out. <br><br>GOI has to define a vaccine distribution strategy and how it will reach every Indian. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/x5GX2vECnN\">pic.twitter.com\/x5GX2vECnN<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RahulGandhi\/status\/1326393075393032192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 11, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Gagandeep Kang, who is known for his work with vaccines spoke to Scroll.in and said that since Pfizer&#8217;s coronavirus vaccine is an mRNA vaccine, it is going to be very expensive for India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":105450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,17],"tags":[95528,95671,92435,98407,98406],"yst_prominent_words":[5697,88149,94992,5087,65756,76634,25417,32527,3704,53425,4922,8418,94844,64317],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2020\/11\/11124545\/pfizer-min.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105443"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=105443"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=105443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->