Indian Scientists are working on “Warm Vaccine” for COVID-19

Indian scientists are working on “warm vaccine” that being heat resistant would work effectively

Almost all vaccines need to be distributed and distributed between 2C and 8C in what is called the cold chain. And most of the developing Covid-19 vaccines, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), will need to be refrigerated at temperatures below 0C, which is a water freezer.

Imagine a Covid-19 vaccine that tolerates heat and can be shipped to remote cities and villages for tens of millions of jabs without going through a series of colds.

A team of Indian scientists is working on such a vaccine. They say that a "warm" or heat-resistant drug can be stored at 100C for 90 minutes, at 70C for about 16 hours, and at 37C for more than a month or more.

Raghavan Varadarajan, a biophysicist and professor at the Indian Institute of Science, and his team tested the vaccine in animals. "We have had good results," said Prof Varadarajan. They are now waiting for funding to begin safety and toxicity testing for people. Their paper was approved for publication in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

"I hope that after this study, new approaches to independent vaccines will be opened," said Dr Renu Swarup, secretary of the Indian Department of Biological Sciences.

Medications that are resistant to high temperatures are rare.

Only three of them - protective against meningitis, human papillomavirus (HPV) and cholera - are licensed and approved by the WHO for use at temperatures up to 40C. These vaccines can be quickly distributed to hard-to-reach communities, and reduce the pressure on health care workers. They proved useful during major responses such as the distribution of the cholera vaccine in Mozambique last year following Hurricane Idai, according to WHO.

"The opportunity to deliver antiretroviral drugs without the cold chain to reach the most remote areas in resource-intensive areas is very helpful. It can be very helpful in mass vaccination campaigns where hundreds of thousands of vaccines need to be distributed to multiple vaccines in a short period of time," said Julien Potet, policy counselor. Frontières' Access Campaign.
India expects to receive and use 400-500 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine and plans to inject about 250 million people between January and July next year. They will be rolled out mainly through the country's 42-year immunization program, one of the world's largest health programs. It targets 55 million people, especially newborns and pregnant women, with free doses of vaccines against twelve diseases each year.