Tag: covid 19 treatment

Vaccination and COVID-19

How long has it been since we went to school met our friends or had a family dinner at some restaurant? Since March 2020, we have all been advised to stay home and sanitise ourselves in order to stay safe. Sanitizers and masks have been added to our daily use products, all because of one tiny yet dangerous virus Covid-19!

The world is now waiting anxiously for a vaccine against this dreaded virus. Researchers around the world are working round the clock to develop vaccines to combat the pandemic. Currently, more than 165 vaccines against the corona virus are under process and 27 vaccines are undergoing human trials. Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before reaching the clinic. Today, scientists all over the world are racing to produce a safe and effective vaccine by next year.

• When did the efforts start

Efforts to make a successful Covid-19 vaccine began in January 2020 with the deciphering of the SARS-CoV -2 genome. The first vaccine safety trials in humans started in March but the road ahead remains uncertain. Some trials will fail and others may end without a clear result. But a few may succeed in stimulating the immune system to produce effective antibodies against the virus.

• India and vaccine against Covid-19

Like many other countries, India too is immersed in the efforts to develop successful vaccines to counter Covid-19. Thirty different Indian companies are trying to produce a vaccine to fight the infection. 7 out of these have received approval from the World Health Organization. These vaccines are in different stages of testing and clinical trials now.

COVAXIN

COVAXIN is developed by Hyderabad based Bharat Biotech International Limited in collaboration with ICMR and NIV, Pune. This is the first vaccine from India to get regulatory approval. The vaccine makes us an inactive version of a virus to spike up production of antibodies in the host body. It recently initiated Phase I and Phase II of clinical testing.

ZyCoV-D

ZyCoV-D is being developed by Zydus Cadila based in Ahmedabad. The Phase I trials of the vaccine have already begun. Extensive research was done regarding the same in collaboration with medical labs in Europe and US.

• Russia and vaccine against Covid-19

Russia is one of the countries worst affected by Covid-19. The country has been pushing extensively for a Covid-19 vaccine for quite some time now; Russia too is a part of the race to produce the world’s first Covid vaccine. It is possible that Russia would be ready with its first domestic corona virus vaccine soon. The clinical trials were conducted by the Gamaleya National Research centre of Epidemiology and microbiology. There seem to be no reports of side effects on the volunteers. All the participants showed immunity and the country is planning for the serial production of the vaccine by September. By the beginning of next year, Russia hopes to manufacture several million doses of corona virus vaccines per month.

• Oxford University’s efforts to develop a vaccine

The university of Oxford has partnered with AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company to develop an adenovirus vector vaccine to combat Covid-19. The vaccine prototype is currently in Phase III of testing. Trials of the vaccine developed by Oxford University show it can trigger an immune response. The vaccine which has so far been found to be safe and effective is expected to be made available for the masses by the end of 2020. This vaccine would also be the first such vaccine to have a large scale testing in India. The observatory data for this vaccine is expected to be available by November this year. The company has tied up with Pune based serum institute of India to mass produce the vaccine once the company gets required approvals and licensing from medical boards.

• Some methods used to make vaccines for Covid-19

Different scientists across the world try different techniques and formulas to develop vaccines. The Oxford researchers have put small sections of the corona virus genetic code into a harmless virus that infects chimpanzees. They appear to have developed a safe virus that looks enough like the corona virus to produce an immune system. Some other scientists have used pieces of raw genetic code, either DNA or RNA. When these are injected into the body it would start producing bits of viral proteins which the immune system can learn to fight. There is also work on corona virus vaccines called ‘plug and play’ vaccines. This method is new and less tested.

Thank you for reading. Have a nice day!🌼

India’s private hospitals and their exorbitant charges

Image courtesy- Social Media

On the month of May 14th in the current year 2020, Mr. Tushar Jindal, 40, a kidney patient, tested positive for novel coronavirus and his family shocked with the results made some calls to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, India’s one of the elite private hospital situated in Delhi. The private hospital allegedly asked for an advance deposit of INR 5 lakhs for admission.

Since the amount was hefty for a middle class Indian family, following advice from Mr. Jindal’s nephrologist, they admitted him at Max Hospital in Saket, Delhi where an advance of INR 2.5 lakhs had to be paid.

“While I was admitted there, I barely received any treatment as my condition was stable. I was discharged within four days, but I was handed an exorbitant bill of ₹1.98 lakh,” claimed Mr. Jindal. He has sent a legal notice to the hospital contesting many of the items charged for and claiming that the bill issued to him was “faulty and fake and carries a lot of unnecessary and unreasonable charges”.

Mr. Jindal’s notice states that medicines and drugs which were not administered to him have been charged for in the bill and a charge of ₹71,000 questioned for “investigation” offered no other detail. Specifically, the notice states that being a kidney transplant patient, Mr. Jindal takes a particular brand of medicine prescribed by his nephrologist and he has been charged for a medicine he could never take, as it belongs to another company. He claims that he consumed his nephrologist-prescribed brand but has been charged for an alternative with four units and six times a day. Mr. Jindal was also charged ₹8,900 per day for PPE kits amounting to ₹35,600, hospital bills show. He was also charged ₹52,000 for “other charges”, which the notice terms “irrelevant and fake”.

Responding to queries, a Max Healthcare spokesperson said: “A patient’s attendants are counselled about the estimated cost of treatment at the time of admission itself, and they are required to sign an informed consent form for all treatment and procedures. Bill updates are also shared on a day-to-day basis on registered mobile numbers of attendants for any immediate concerns. The attendants of the patient were explained the overall consumption of PPEs during a 24-hour cycle, which is approximately nine PPEs per day per person in the COVID ICU, and the costs charged to the patient are in line with the costs incurred by the hospital in sourcing the PPEs.”

D.S. Rana, chairman of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, said “the upfront payment is to tide over certain issues such as the family of a COVID-19 patient not being allowed to come to the hospital due to risk of infection. How will they make payments? We ask for INR 5 lakhs as advance from COVID-19 patients and refund the money if the bill is less than that,” he said.

Dr. Rana said, “The hospital follows a similar process for non-COVID-19 treatment too”.

“There is nothing to hide. Our expenses have gone up since the virus outbreak. Our hospital is just meeting expenses, not making any profit. The government can audit our accounts if they want,” he said.

Another case of a Journalist from nationalheraldindia shows another face of the overall situation and the huge differences in charging between government and private hospitals. The said journalist initially went seeking aid from an elite private hospital who gave a pricing quotation of INR 9 lakhs, the journalist was shocked with this pricing and with the mere fact that particular hospital called it as “a package for covid-19 treatment”, yes a package!

Shocked with the pricing, he decided to admit himself to the district civil hospital in the city where they charged him INR 50 (fifty) per day for three medicines and less than INR 1,000 per day for equipment that included oxygen cylinders and ventilators. With his multiple ailments, including chronic kidney disease, he should have had no hope of survival. But it is almost a miracle that the doctors at the district civil hospital pulled him out of danger and did not allow the comorbidity factors to undermine his chances of recovery. Out of hospital for a week now, he is fighting fit and back to the normal activities of a journalist.

Now what we can do to tackle these situations is to question the administrations, the system and governments ruling these systems, we need to ask our governments as to “why they are unable to curb the exorbitant charges by the prominent private hospitals of India”.