Covaxin fights Indian Strain: America's top pandemic expert Dr Anthony Fauci said that the Covaxin has been found to neutralise the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus, first detected in India.
The White House chief medical adviser also mentioned that since it has the efficacy to neutralise the new variant of the virus, the vaccination could be a "very important antidote" for India amid a deadly second wave of infections.
The B.1.617 variant is also being called a ''double mutant'' or the ''Indian strain''.
"This is something where we're still gaining data on a daily basis. But the most recent data, was looking at convalescent Sera of COVID-19 cases and people who received the vaccine used in India, the Covaxin. It was found to neutralise the 617 variant," Fauci said during a conference call on April 27.
"So, despite the real difficulty that we're seeing in India, vaccination could be a very, very important antidote against this," he added.
India has so far given more than 100 million doses of two approved vaccines - Covishield and Covaxin. While Bharat Biotech's Covaxin has an efficacy rate of 81 percent, preliminary data from the phase 3 trial shows, the Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII), has an efficacy rate of 90 percent.
The New York Times recently reported that Covaxin teaches our immune system to make antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The antibodies attach to viral proteins, such as the spike proteins that stud its surface.
"Very preliminary but encouraging result: #Covishield protects against #B1617. Early results using in vitro neutralization assay show that both convalescent (prior infection) sera and Covishield vaccinated sera offer protection against the B.1.617 variant, aka #DoubleMutant," Rakesh Mishra, director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) tweeted last week.
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