India’s First COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate can Offer Protection Against New Strain

Bharat Biotech’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin can offer protection against new strain of coronavirus found in the United Kingdom, chairman and managing director Krishna Ella said on Tuesday. Developed by the Hyderabad based drugmaker in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology, the vaccine is in the phase III clinical trial in the country.

“It (coronavirus) is expected to have a lot of mutation and you can be rest assured this vaccine will also protect against that (mutated) virus because of two hypotheses… “So you have these two components in the inactivated vaccine. It will also take care of those mutations,” Ella said. He was addressing a virtual programme organised by CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology.

Answering to the queries on the new strain of the coronavirus infection, Ella said, “Mutation is not unexpected and the virus mutates on its own to reach more number of people as it is a non-living organism.”

The new variant genome of SARS-CoV-2 was detected in three samples in the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences Hospital (NIMHANS) Bengaluru, two in the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB in Hyderabad and one in the National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune, the health ministry said in a statement. All six of the infected people had been kept in isolation, the ministry added. Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine, the ministry said.

COVID-19 vaccines will work against new variants of the virus detected in the United Kingdom and South Africa, Prof K Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific advisor (PSA) to the Government of India, said on Tuesday.

“Vaccines will work against the variants detected in the UK and South Africa. There is no evidence that current vaccines will fail to protect against these COVID-19 variants.

The UK variant of the virus is more “transmissible”,” Raghavan said. He asserted that people should reduce transmission through physical distancing and follow all public health measures.

There are six COVID-19 vaccines in different clinical trial stages in India. Besides, three vaccine candidates are in pre-clinical trial stages. Pfizer, Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech have sought emergency use authorisation of their COVID-19 vaccines.

Source: LiveMint