Bharat Biotech said on Tuesday that its vaccine candidate, Covaxin, will be effective in dealing with the new variants of coronavirus. Bharat Biotech Chairman and Managing Director Krishna Ella said the protein components of inactive Covaxin will take care of mutations. His comments came amid growing concerns over new variants of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, especially the variant that was detected recently in the UK.
Krishna Ella, who was delivering the ninth Dr Manohar V.N. Shirodkar Memorial Lecture organised by the Telangana Academy of Sciences, observed that any virus is expected to have mutate.
Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech is developing Covaxin in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). It has completed phase 1 and 2 clinical trials. The phase 3 efficacy trials of Covaxin are in progress with 20,000 volunteers, Ella said.
The leading vaccine maker is also developing a single-dose nasal vaccine for COVID-19.
In his lecture on ‘Innovation in Public Health - Our Journey,’ Ella said there were 40,000 unknown viruses and 10,000 zoonotic viruses and there was a need to focus on neglected and unknown diseases that could become global pandemics in future.
“All neglected diseases start from developing countries. Americans and Europeans are scared of us because these neglected diseases can turn into pandemics," he said.
Meanwhile, all international passengers who arrived in India in a span of 14 days, from December 9 to December 22, if symptomatic and tested positive for the coronavirus, will be subjected to genome sequencing in a bid to find if they have the new UK COVID-19 variant. The UK government had recently announced that the newly identified variant of the virus found in their population is up to 70% more transmissible.
A total of twenty UK returnees were found to be positive with the new variant genome, the Central government announced, adding that all these persons have been kept in a single room isolation in designated health care facilities.