Indians are searching ways to MAKE coronavirus vaccine at home
The sporadic surge in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths has made the whole world desperate for a vaccine. Russia has already approved a 'fast-tracked' vaccine with less than two months of testing, and now, a report has shown that people in India are increasingly searching for ways to make a shot for the disease at home. Here's all about it.
DIY vaccine among top searched queries on Google
According to recent Google Trends' data, "How to make a coronavirus vaccine at home" was the second-most searched query on its search engine in July. Other top coronavirus-related topics that people looked up heavily last month were 'Amitabh Bachchan coronavirus positive', 'Russian coronavirus vaccines', 'Coronavirus airborne', 'Is coronavirus airborne', 'How to make coronavirus vaccine', and 'Coronavirus news', among others.
Motivation from independent groups working on DIY vaccines?
While other searches were pretty normal, in line with last month's biggest stories, the sudden interest of Indians in developing a COVID-19 vaccine at home has come as a strange surprise. There is no way to be completely sure, but the motivation for the DIY vaccine may have come from select few scientist groups working to do something similar.
US scientists home-made vaccine effort
Last month, a group of as many as 20 scientists, including some from Harvard University, made headlines in the US for making a DIY nasal vaccine and injecting themselves with it for testing. It was created from materials like fragments of the protein present in the novel coronavirus and chitosan (sugar molecule from shellfish), but there is still no evidence that it works.
Josiah Zanyer's DIY effort could also be a reason
Along with the aforementioned group, biohacker and former NASA scientist Josiah Zanyer is also working on a home-made DNA vaccine for COVID-19. He plans to live-stream the vaccine experiment and has even given indications of testing it on himself.
But, can homemade vaccine be a thing?
The short answer is: No. Even if you are an expert in biotech, you cannot engineer a vaccine for the world in your backyard. The entire process of developing a safe, effective vaccine with long-lasting immunity not just requires expert-level knowledge but also extensive testing on thousands of people, which entails government approval and is not possible to do alone, at home.
No DIY vaccine has been created
That said, it must be noted that there is no DIY vaccine for COVID-19 at the moment and not a single country is pushing any such project.
