Highlights:
- Indian made Coronavirus vaccine has been found to neutralise the B.1.617 variant
- White House’s Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci made this claim on Tuesday
- Dr Fauci talked about how Covaxin can help India
India’s very own home-grown Coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Bharat Biotech, Covaxin, has been found to neutralise the B.1.617 variant, also known as the Indian double mutant strain, says the White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci, on Tuesday.
As per the news agency PTI, Dr Fauci said, “Now, this is something where we’re still gaining data on a daily basis. But the most recent data was looking at convalescent sera of COVID-19 cases in people who received the vaccine used in India, the Covaxin. And it was found to neutralise the 617 variant”.
“So despite the real difficulty that we’re seeing in India, vaccination could be a very, very important antidote against this,” Dr Fauci was quoted as telling reporters.
“So I’ll stop there with the final statement. The one thing you can gather from everything I’ve said: that it’s very important to get vaccinated.”
Covaxin has been developed by Bharat Biotech in partnership with the National Institute of Virology and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and has already been approved for emergency use starting 3rd January 3 while still in the clinical trial.
Trial results showed that the vaccine has an efficacy of 78% as per ICMR.
The B.1.617 variant which is mostly found in COVID cases from Maharashtra and Delhi, has three new spike protein mutations. This variant is said to be pushing the deadly second surge in COVID-19 across the country.
Covaxin uses the dead viruses and then teaches the human body’s immune system to make antibodies against the coronavirus. When Covaxin is administered, immune cells recognise the dead virus which prompts the immune system to make antibodies to fight the coronavirus.
The World Health Organisation, on Tuesday, said the B.1.617 that a variant of COVID-19 feared to be contributing to a surge in coronavirus cases in India has been found in over a dozen other countries.
The United Nations health agency said that the B.1.617 variant of the COVID-19 first found in India had, as of Tuesday, been detected in more than 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database “from at least 17 countries”.
In its weekly epidemiological update on the global pandemic, WHO said, “Most sequences were uploaded from India, the United Kingdom, USA and Singapore’.
The WHO recently listed B.1.617 as a “variant of interest” and said it had been found in 17 countries.
India’s COVID cases made a new today as 3.6 lakh cases and over 3,000 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
