Indian vaccines effective, says White House expert |
According to a study, Covishield and Covaxin — the two coronavirus vaccines currently in use in India — have efficacy against the `Indian strain` and the people vaccinated are showing "milder" illness in case of infection post-vaccination. Anurag Agrawal, the Director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), said the study on the effectiveness of the available vaccines on the B.1.617 variant of SARS-CoV2 suggest that post-vaccination infections are milder. The B.1.617 variant is also being called a `double mutant` or the `Indian strain`. The B.1.617 variant of SARS-CoV2 has been found prevalent largely in Maharashtra and Delhi that have been severely hit by the devastating second wave of the pandemic. White House chief medical adviser and America`s top pandemic expert Dr Anthony Fauci has also stated that Covaxin, India`s home-grown COVID-19 vaccine has been found to neutralise Double Mutant or 617 variants of the Coronavirus. Dr Fauci said despite the real difficulty that we are seeing in India, vaccination could be a very, very important antidote against this. Developed by Bharat Biotech in partnership with National Institute of Virology and Indian Council of Medical Research, Covaxin was approved for emergency use on January 3. Trial results later showed the vaccine has a current efficacy of 78 percent.
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