NEW DELHI: As the number of people identified as carrying the UK variant of Covid-19 strain reached 82, experiments began at the ICMR’s National Institute of Virology to assess whether Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin can neutralise the new strain.
Covaxin, which has been jointly developed by Bharat Biotech and the ICMR, had received the restricted emergency use authorisation by the apex drug regulator in India along with Oxford University-AstraZeneca’s Covishield, being manufactured in India by the Serum Institute of India.
The approval of Covaxin, which is still under phase 3 trial in the country, had triggered a torrent of criticism, but a key reason cited by the drug regulator had said that the REU was being granted in the wake of the mutation in Covid-19 that makes it more transmissible.
This confidence was based on the argument by the firm which stressed that Covaxin can generate antibodies against multiple proteins instead of spikes alone which in theory suggests that it might have a better chance against the mutated variants.
“The understanding is that for protection from the variant strains a whole virus vaccine has a better chance as compared to subunit vaccine or only spike protein-based or receptor-binding domain-based vaccines,” a senior official at the ICMR told this newspaper.
“To check whether that happens, we will use the vaccine using the culture of virus variants, cell lines and the vaccine,” he added. However, some experts expressed their apprehensions that such an experiment can only be in-vitro neutralisation data — comparing between the UK or South Africa strain and the Covid-19 strains that have remained dominant so far.
“What is needed, at least, is to use say sera from RBD vaccine immunised individuals and whole virus vaccine immunised individuals and see if the former group is extremely poor in blocking the variant viruses,” said a virologist from a government institution who did not wish to be named.
Positive sign
Pfizer on Friday announced that the Covid-19 vaccine it has developed appeared to work against a key mutation in the transmissible new variants of the coronavirus, as per a laboratory study
PM Modi to meet CMs ahead of vaccine rollout
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a meeting with chief ministers of all states on Monday ahead of the roll out of Covid-19 vaccines in the country, government sources said on Friday. Two vaccines -- one each by the Serum Institute of India and the Bharat Biotech -- have been granted the restricted-use authorisation by the Drug Controller General of India.
By July, the Centre is hoping to get about 30 crore population inoculated against Covid-19. Officials, meanwhile, said the second dry run on Friday had been without any major glitches and indicated that states were ready for the actual exercise.