Santo Domingo, RD.
The Dominican government announced the acquisition of 110,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine, developed in India by AstraZeneca. This is expected to be the first batch to arrive in the Dominican Republic in March.
What are the features of this vaccine?
This vaccine is made from a weakened version of a cold virus known as chimpanzee adenovirus. It has been modified to look more like the coronavirus, although it cannot cause disease by causing the immune system to produce antibodies and preparing it to attack the coronavirus infection, as published by the BBC.
For greater efficacy, a two dose supply is required; wait four to 12 weeks for the second inoculation after the first injection.
The BBC article states that the manufacturer should be stored with a refrigeration of 2 ° C to 8 ° C, it would be the same temperature as a household refrigerator making it easy to apply to deliver in any environment.
This is an advantage over the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which must be stored at -70 ° C, so special containers must be purchased to preserve this brand of vaccines, while Covishield would not need this.
Covishield / ChAdOx1nCoV-19 Corona Virus Vaccine – Recombinant is manufactured by Oxford-AstraZeneca of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer producing more than 50 million doses per month.
International clinical studies with the vaccine showed that when people were given a half dose and then a full dose, the effectiveness was 90%. But there was not enough clear data to support the idea of a half dose and a full dose.
The vaccine was approved in an emergency and the Dominican government hopes the Serum Institute of India will be the first home to deliver the doses to the country, although it said they arrived in March, no day was specified.
The first to receive this vaccine would, according to Dominican authorities, be about 12,500 first-line armed forces in the health sector, which consists of about 210,000 people.
The vaccine produced in India and already approved by 12 health authorities in the world has been approved by the National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Technology (Anmat).
Other countries that have applied to buy
Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Seychelles have all received the Indian Covishield vaccine.
The Covishield distributors have shipped their vaccines as gifts and other doses through commercial agreements.
In June last year, AstraZeneca signed a license agreement with Serum to deliver 1 billion doses to low and middle-income countries, with a commitment to provide 400 million by the end of 2020.
It also plans to send doses to Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Mauritius after regulatory approval from these countries. It has also authorized commercial export of the Covishield vaccine to Brazil.
India is a major producer of medicines and vaccines with its own research.
National expert group for the administration of the vaccine against COVID-19 in August 2020 was established with the aim of contracting and distributing vaccines that currently have three advanced projects: Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Medical Research Council (CMR); ZyCOV-D, developed by Zydus Cadila, which is expected to produce more than 100 million doses; and finally the Covishield, which was approved by the government on Tuesday.