NEW DELHI
The results on the effectiveness of Covaxin, the indigenous COVID-19 vaccine, have been welcomed by health experts, who expect a boost in the country’s inoculation campaign.
“We expect vaccine confidence and acceptability to grow now. We can also expect the country’s vaccination campaign to have a boost now,” said Dr. Lalit Kant, former head of the Division of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases, Council Indian medical research. Anadolu Agency.
“I think it’s a great achievement for India because they made the vaccine from scratch,” he said. Kant, however, says that companies must come up with a complete analysis. “Then we will get to know the real effectiveness of the vaccine,” he said.
Covaxin is manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Medical Research Council.
On Wednesday, the company announced intermediate clinical results based on efficacy data in its phase 3 clinical trial, which indicated that Covaxin is 81% effective.
In January, when the government announced the approval of two vaccines, questions arose about the “premature” approval of Covaxin because it had not then completed phase-3 studies.
There have been reports of reluctance to get the coronavirus vaccine from various parts of the country since the government launched its vaccination campaign in January.
“Today is an important stage in the discovery of the vaccine, for science and our fight against coronavirus. With today’s results from our Phase 3 clinical trials, we now report data on our COVID-19 vaccine from Phase 1, 2 and 3 studies involving approximately 27,000 participants, “the company said in a press release.
According to the company, the vaccine is also highly effective against emerging variants.
“It is significant against emerging trends,” said Dr. Krishna Ella, president and CEO of Bharat Biotech.
Covaxin demonstrates a trend of high clinical efficacy against COVID-19, but also significant immunogenicity against rapidly emerging variants, he added.
Dr. Lakshmi PVM, a professor in the Department of Community Medicine at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, told Anadolu Agency that people will now be more comfortable using it.
“It’s a good development. It will help in a way that people will be more comfortable with this vaccine,” she said, adding, “There has been some reluctance to this vaccine. I think the results will disappear through the announcement.”
Indian government statistics also show that the number of doses of Covaxin is much lower compared to the Covishield vaccine manufactured locally by the Indian Serum Institute in Pune and developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
The results of the phase-3 studies came at a time when India is conducting phase-2 COVID-19 vaccination across the country. According to the Indian Ministry of Health, so far over 16 million doses of vaccine have been administered across the country.
Earlier this week, when the country began the second phase of vaccination, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the first dose of the Covaxin vaccine.
The total number of cases in the country was 11,173,761 since Friday morning, with 157,548 deaths.
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