Highlights:
- According to the Lancet, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin had a 77.8 percent effectiveness rate in treating symptomatic Covid-19 patients.
- Covaxin ‘induces a significant antibody response’ two weeks after two doses are given.
Covaxin, a Covid-19 vaccination developed by the Bharat Biotech International Ltd. and government’s medical research agency, was demonstrated to be efficacious against symptomatic Covid-19 in a long-awaited study published in The Lancet.
Covaxin, which use conventional, inactivated-virus technology, “induces a significant antibody response” two weeks after two doses, according to The Lancet. According to the medical publication, no serious vaccine-related fatalities or adverse events were observed during a randomised trial comprising 24,419 participants aged 18-97 years in India between November 2020 and May 2021.
The initial report was funded by officials from Bharat Biotech and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and co-authored by officials from both the organisations, is in line with the company’s previous efficacy and safety announcements and may help put an end to the controversy surrounding the shot’s early approval in India in January.
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At the time, the vaccine had not yet cleared final-stage testing, causing considerable hesitancy in the early weeks of the vaccination campaign. Since then, more than 100 million doses of Covaxin have been administered throughout India, and the World Health Organization has added the vaccine to its list of Covid vaccines approved for emergency use.
However, during its analysis, the WHO’s independent technical body studying the vaccine repeatedly requested additional information from the company, delaying its inclusion on the body’s pre-qualified causing frustration to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which had advocated the locally developed shot.
Bharat Biotech Chairman Krishna Ella had previously slammed people who questioned Covaxin, and last week told in a conference that WHO clearance took so long because of criticism of the vaccine, which harmed company reputation. According to The Lancet, more study will be needed to determine the vaccine’s long-term safety and efficiency, as well as its capability to guard against severe sickness, hospitalisation, and mortality, as well as its ability to fight against delta and other variants of concern.
