NEW DELHI – India’s Bharat Biotech says Covid-19 has been shown to be 81% effective in protecting people in a large clinical trial, a report that could boost the vaccine’s inoculation efforts and diplomatic efforts in India.
Bharat Biotech is one of the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world, but is little known outside the industry. It has been developing a Covid-19 vaccine since the first half of 2020, which New Delhi has approved for emergency use this year. India has already given the vaccine to more than a million people.
However, many Indians said they were reluctant to get the Bharat Biotech shot because they wanted to wait for the results of the late studies. India’s vaccination effort has gone much slower than expected, and some health workers have said that one of the reasons is that people do not feel confident in the Bharat Biotech vaccine.
Alignment for Covid-19 photos in New Delhi last month.
Photo:
T. Narayan / Bloomberg News
The company said it wants to clarify any concerns with its announcement on Wednesday. The interim results of his phase 3 study – which offered 25,800 people aged 18 to 98 years with the vaccine or placebo – suggest that it is effective against Covid-19. The company added that it has early indications that it is also effective against the more contagious version of the coronavirus in the UK.
“Today is an important day for us, the company and also for the country and Indian science,” said Krishna Ella, president and CEO of Bharat Biotech.
More than 11 million people have been confirmed infected in India, surpassed by the US alone While fewer Indians per capita are killed by the virus, the country’s economy has been one of the hardest hit.
India is in the middle of what could be the most ambitious vaccination actions in the world. It is trying to attract 300 million of the more than 1.3 billion citizens by August. To date, it has administered approximately 15 million doses, most of the vaccine developed in the UK by Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC and mass-produced in India by the Serum Institute of India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed confidence in the local vaccine this week, when he took the first photo of the Bharat Biotech version.
“Remarkable how doctors and scientists worked in a short time to strengthen the global fight against COVID-19,” he wrote on Twitter with a photo of him being shot.
As highly transmissible coronavirus variants travel the world, scientists are struggling to understand why these new versions of the virus are spreading faster and what this could mean for vaccination efforts. New research says the key may be the spike protein, which gives the coronavirus an unmistakable shape. Illustration: Nick Collingwood / WSJ
India has established itself as a surprise leader in vaccine diplomacy, helping to help especially developing countries as well as some rich countries, as much of the supply from the US and Europe has been allocated, and manufacturers around the world faced unexpected production bottlenecks.
India has managed to send tens of millions of doses abroad due to the huge production capacity of the Serum Institute of India, which has produced enough AstraZeneca vaccines to provide the local inoculation unit with more than enough for export. It has exported over 45 million doses to about 45 countries, including Canada, Kenya and Cambodia. About 7 million of these doses were donated by the Indian government.
With the results of phase 3, Bharat Biotech also intends to become a major exporter. He said on Wednesday that more than 40 countries were already interested in using his vaccine.
The company is not new to the vaccine race. Over the years it has produced billions of doses of other vaccines. He said his Covid-19 vaccine would be particularly competitive with many on the market, as it only needs to be stored in regular refrigerators and the doses can be used up to 28 days after opening a bottle. Other vaccines should often be used within a few hours of opening, which means that any unused doses in one day should be discarded.
The Bharat Biotech vaccine was developed in conjunction with the Indian Medical Research Council, a government organization that said the success of the late-stage process is a matter of national pride.
“The journey from bank to bed to the fully indigenous Covid-19 vaccine in less than eight months shows the immense power of autonomous India to fight the odds and stand in the global public health community,” said Balram Bhargava, CEO to the ICMR. “It is also evidence of India’s emergence as a global vaccine superpower.”
—Krishna Pokharel contributed to this article.
Write to Eric Bellman at [email protected]
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