India Successfully Isolated UK Variant as Covaxin Emerged the Second Vaccine Close to Get Emergency Use Nod

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Jan 2: As India became the first country in the world on Saturday to successfully isolate and culture the UK-variant of Coronavirus, the subject expert panel of the drug regulator recommended approval for the second vaccine, Covaxin being developed indigenously by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech for restricted emergency use and the authorities expressed the confidence that the mass immunization programme could be rolled out as early as mid- January.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Direct or Dr. Randeep Guleria on Saturday said India was ready for a mass rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine within the coming 10 to 14 days. “We will start the vaccination in a slow process. By that time more vaccines will be available,” Dr Guleria said while stressing on the need for a proper time table in order to ensure crowd management when the vaccination process begins.

“We also need to ensure that the vaccines are not getting wasted because of the cold storages. This is why the dry run helps,” he said. A dry run for the vaccination against Covid-19 was successfully carried out all over the country on Saturday in order to ensure smooth inoculation of the country’s population when the jab is rolled out. The dry run is aimed at equipping the entire administration and management of vaccine supply, storage and logistics, including cold chain management, the union health ministry said.

After giving approval to Oxford/AstraZeneca’s ‘Covishield’ being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) for emergency use on Friday, the expert panel of the Drugs Controller General of India gave similar approval to Covaxin on Saturday. A customary final nod could be expected from the DCGI in a couple of days, official sources said.

Covaxin being developed with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology, became the second vaccine in India to inch one step closer to the final approval for emergency use.

Both the vaccine candidates have been recommended for restricted emergency use which comes with a few riders. For Oxford vaccine, the panel has imposed certain regulatory provisions, including that the shot is indicated for active immunisation in individuals of 18 years or more to prevent the disease and that it should be administered intramuscularly in two doses at an interval of four to six weeks.

Bharat Biotech’s vaccine candidate is an inactivated one which are developed by inactivating (killing) the live microorganisims that cause the disease. This destroys the pathogen’s ability to replicate, but keeps it intact so that the immune system can still recognise it and produce an immune response. There are many inactivated vaccines against Hepatitis A, Influenza, Polio, Rabies, which offer “excellent protection,” Bharat Biotech has said.

Meanwhile, the ICMR claimed that India has successfully isolated and cultured the UK-variant of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

“UK-variant of the virus, with all signature changes, is now successfully isolated and cultured at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) from the clinical specimens collected from UK-returnees,” the country’s apex medical body wrote on Twitter.

It said Sars-CoV-2 was being tracked through the countrywide network of ICMR-laboratories since early days of the epidemic in India. No country has yet reported successful isolation and culture of the UK variant, according to ICMR. Vero cell lines were used by the scientists of ICMR-NIV to culture the UK-variant of the virus, it added.

India has reported 29 cases of the new coronavirus variant that is spreading rapidly around Britain and other countries, within five days of tracing its first such infection. The new United Kingdom variant genome of Sars-CoV-2 – B.1.1.7, which is much more infectious, has prompted comprehensive contact tracing for co-travellers, family members and others of those who have travelled to the UK in the last 38 days.

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