Open source covid vaccine: a new hope.

Byline: Nazir Ahmed Shaikh

The swift development of effective vaccines against COVID-19 was an unprecedented scientific achievement. But production challenges, vaccine nationalism, and variants such as Omicron are the hurdles. The global efforts to develop and distribute an effective vaccine produced several safe and effective options. The accelerated development of multiple vaccines is unprecedented; the process typically takes eight to fifteen years.

However, the immunization of a critical mass of the world's population, continues to confront challenges, including dangerous new strains of the virus, such as omicron; global competition over a limited supply of doses; and public hesitation about the vaccines.

Global vaccinations status

More than twenty vaccines have been approved for general or emergency use in countries including China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As of late 2021, close to nine billion doses had been administered worldwide. Several countries, e.g. Portugal, Singapore, UAE etc. have made significant progress in immunizing their citizens.

The uneven rollout of vaccines was felt sharply in places such as India, where the spread of the delta variant and relaxed restrictions led to a devastating surge in mid-2021 that impeded vaccine shipments elsewhere. The country eventually ramped up its vaccination campaign, immunizing more than five hundred million people by the end of the year. Meanwhile, WHO has warned that the lack of access to vaccines in Africa, where less than 10% of the population has been fully vaccinated, will prolong the pandemic.

How it works?

Traditionally, vaccines are dead or weakened virus molecules, commonly known as "antigens". They trigger defensive white blood cells in the immune system to create antibodies that bind to the virus and neutralize it. Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine, which contains inactivated coronaviruses, is one example.

There are also several types of vaccines that use the virus's genetic material - DNA or RNA - to prompt the body to create antibodies. The vaccines Pfizer and BioNTech from Germany Moderna are genetic-based. No vaccine of this kind had ever been approved for commercial use in humans before the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, some COVID-19 vaccines rely on viral vectors, or modified versions of a different virus, to prompt an immune response. Several approved COVID-19 vaccines use viral vectors, for example University of Oxford and British-Swedish...