UPSC Current Affairs – August 10, 2020

Russia has approved the second Covid-19 vaccine called the ‘EpiVacCorona’ after early-stage trials. This new vaccine comes has been approved two months after the Russia’s first vaccine Sputnik V.

Highlights

• Russia have became the first country to give regulatory approval to a Covid-19 vaccine in August after it launched the Sputnik V.
• The third Russian vaccine against Covid-19 which is being developed by the Chumakov Centre would also be approved soon after the trials are successful.

EpiVacCorona

This second Russian vaccine has been developed by the Vector State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology. The vaccine was tested on100 volunteers in early-stage. It was a placebo-controlled human trials that lasted more than two months. The volunteers were aged between 18 and 60 years old.

Sputnik V vaccine

This was the first Covid-19 vaccine of the world that Russia launched on August 2020. Russia named it after its satellite called Sputnik which was the first satellite of the world. This vaccine uses ‘human adenoviral vector’ technology. Thus, the vaccine causes illnesses including fevers, coughs and sore throats, pink eye, diarrhoea and bladder infections. Basically, Vaccines that uses the adenoviral vector are known to cause such illnesses. The vaccine will act like a Trojan Horse that will carry the instructions for the cells in the human body in order to produce the spiky protein or outer layer of virus causing Covid-19 disease, SARS-CoV-2. This will thus help the body to recognise the spike protein as a foreign substance and build an immune response against it.