Are COVID-19 Vaccines Safe and Efficient? All You Need to Know

Before COVID vaccines hit the market, we take questions around ‘vaccine hesitancy’ to virologist Dr Shahid Jameel.

While vaccine companies rush to seek authorisation for emergency use in India, there are quite a few people who are skeptical about taking a vaccine against COVID-19.

‘Vaccine hesitancy’ is the buzzword and this hesitancy is different from anti-vaccine sentiments. People genuinely have questions about safety, efficacy, adverse events, and the speed with which developments have taken place.

So far, three vaccine groups – Serum Institute's Covishield which is the Indian name of the vaccine being developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca, Covaxin – India's swadeshi vaccine being developed by Bharat Biotech, and the vaccine candidate developed by Pfizer and BioNTech have sought emergency approval in India.