After the outbreak of Covid-19, words such as Quarantine, lockdown, social distancing, covid vaccine, etc., have surged in the search list of google. For many of us, these words were completely new, some of us had heard somewhere and for many of us, these were completely new to our dictionary. The rise in search of these words indicates that people weren’t aware of these words. The vaccine is also among the most searched words. We all have taken vaccines in our lifetime. We all have taken vaccines against Flu, Measles, Hepatitis, etc. These covid vaccines are taken in the duration of certain as prescribed by the medical practices.

What is the vaccine?

So, what are vaccinations for? Is it necessary to vaccinate a person against certain diseases? What is the guarantee that vaccines work? To answer these questions, we have to be clear on what vaccine is. A vaccine generally is a biological substance that is prepared by a certain modification of virus (Dead, alive but weakened, some parts of the virus). These are then tested for several months or even years with the volunteers that are willing to volunteer for the test. After the test, the success and failure of the medicine are determined and these vaccines are made public.

How does a vaccine work?

To understand how Vaccine works, we should know how the immune system of our body works. When a foreign body enters into a human body, the immune system gets activated. The white blood cells produce antibodies in response to the foreign object and neutralize the object. But this doesn’t happen instantly it takes several days. During this period the foreign object if it is a living virus or bacteria it reproduces and causes various diseases. After a certain time, White
blood cells will be able to contain this situation. This is stored in the form of memory in the body. And when the same object enters into the body, the body is prepared for that.

Similar happens with the vaccine. When the vaccine is given to a person, white blood cells get activated thinking of it is a foreign object. It contains the object and stores the information for future use.

Covid vaccines

Instantly, After the outbreak of covid-19, there was a race between the countries like USA, China, The UK, Russia as to who will be the first to produce the vaccine. Millions and millions of dollars were invested into it, finally, about a year later vaccines were introduced by the countries. Russia introduced Sputnik-V, China introduced Sinopharm, USA based companies have introduced Pfizer–BioNTech, Janssen- Janssen Pharmaceutical, Moderna, Oxford–AstraZeneca by the UK, Covaxin by India. These are among the popular vaccines that are available currently around the world.

Nepal has already permitted the above-mentioned vaccines. Nepal has received vaccines from China, India, and the USA as a grant. The government of Nepal has now planned for the purchase of vaccines and has a dedicated budget for it.
Over the months the vaccination rates have increased and more than 1.4 million people have been fully vaccinated. More and more people should come forward for the vaccination if we are to fight the virus. Without immunity against the virus, it is difficult to fight and win this pandemic. So, we should focus on rapid vaccination and live the normal life as we used to.