SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus that was identified for the first time in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization (WHO) labeled the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a worldwide pandemic on March 11, 2020, due to its widespread infectivity pattern. Because of the catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak, the development of safe and efficient vaccinations has become a key priority in every health sector throughout the globe. On the 13th of January 2021, the vaccination campaign against SARS-CoV-2 was launched in India and started the administration of two types of vaccines known as Covaxin and Covishield. Covishield is an adenovirus vector-based vaccine, and Covaxin was developed by a traditional method of vaccine formulation, which is composed of adjuvanted inactivated viral particles. Each vaccine’s utility or efficiency is determined by its formulation, adjuvants, and mode of action. The efficacy of the vaccination depends on numeral properties like generation antibodies, memory cells, and cell-mediated immunity. According to the third-phase experiment, Covishield showed effectiveness of nearly 90%, whereas Covaxin has an effectiveness of about 80%. Both vaccination formulations in India have so far demonstrated satisfactory efficacy against numerous mutant variants of SARS-CoV-2. The efficacy of Covishield may be diminished if the structure of spike (S) protein changes dramatically in the future. In this situation, Covaxin might be still effective for such variants owing to its ability to produce multiple antibodies against various epitopes. This study reviews the comparative immunogenic and therapeutic efficacy of Covaxin and Covishield and also discussed the probable vaccination challenges in upcoming days.
Objectives
Rapid vaccination is the only way to fight against COVID-19.Vaccine hesitancy is the major barrier against this strategy. The main objective of this cross-sectional study was to analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in the general population of West Bengal (India), as well as to investigate the factors that were independently associated with people's desire to receive the vaccine.
Methods
An online questionnaire was distributed by email, Whatsapp, and other social media platforms, and the responses were analyzed using the SPSS (Version 20) software.
Results
We conducted a web-based survey in West Bengal, India (
N
= 803), and accumulated information on individuals' desire to adopt vaccine against COVID-19, views about the virus's effectiveness, and many knowledge-based socio-demographic factors that potentially impact the overall vaccination efforts. We found that, 12.08% of participants do not believe that vaccination against COVID-19 is necessary, but among the rest of the population, 44.33% of individuals are willing to be vaccinated once the vaccine is available, whereas 39.60% of the population responded that they will not be vaccinated immediately but will do so later.
Conclusions
Despite the participants' strong vaccine willingness, our findings revealed a troubling degree of lake of awareness and insignificant scientific knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated vaccination programme. Vaccination hesitation is not a barrier in this survey region, but poor vaccine availability and a lack of awareness campaigns may instill unfavorable beliefs in those who refuse to be vaccinated.
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