Covid: ‘Precautionary’ shot could be of a different vaccine
🔴 Top government sources had told The Indian Express that there is preliminary consensus in the country’s top technical advisory body on Covid vaccination that the next dose should be of a vaccine based on a platform different from that of the first two doses.
As on Saturday, 12.04 crore over the age of 60 have received their first dose of vaccine; and 9.21 crore are fully vaccinated. The official data also shows that 1.03 crore healthcare workers have received their first dose, and 96 lakh are fully vaccinated; 1.83 crore frontline workers have received their first dose, and 1.68 crore are fully vaccinated. Which effectively means that more than 11 crore beneficiaries will be eligible for the “precautionary dose”.
“There is some clarity that if an additional dose is given to a beneficiary, it cannot be, at least in case of inactive whole virus or adenovirus vector Covid-19 vaccine, the same vaccine. So the preliminary consensus is that a beneficiary cannot take three doses of Covishield or Covaxin,” sources said.
Sources said it is very likely that the precautionary dose will be a vaccine of a different platform. Multiple options are likely to available in the coming months. First up is the Hyderabad-based Biological E’s Corbevax, a protein sub-unit Covid-19 vaccine.
This differs from the inactivated whole-cell vaccines, by containing only the antigenic parts of the virus, to trigger a protective immune response. Bio E’s vaccine candidate includes an antigen developed by Texas Children’s Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development and is licensed from BCM Ventures, Baylor College of Medicine’s integrated commercialization team.
The Centre has already made an advance payment of Rs 1,500 crore to reserve 30 crore doses of Corbevax. Sources said that Corbevax is expected to get Emergency Use Authorisation in the next two weeks.
The second candidate for a likely third dose, could be Serum Institute of India’s Covovax. This is a recombinant nanoparticle protein-based Covid-19 vaccine. The US-based Novavax and SII have already received EUA for this vaccine in the Philippines.
The third candidate for a likely third dose, could be Bharat Biotech’s intranasal vaccine. Sources said that this vaccine is expected to come in the second half of January.
The fourth candidate for a likely third dose could be India’s first m-RNA Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pune-based Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd.
Earlier, the government, had said that Gennova’s mRNA vaccines are expected to produce 6 crore doses. More significantly, unlike Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccine, this can be stored at India’s immunisation drive’s cold storage requirements (2-8 degrees Celsius).
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Experts across the globe are recommending mRNA vaccines as booster doses. In September, after reviewing data on booster responses from different combinations of COVID-19 vaccines, the UK expert body, was the first to advise a preference for Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine to be offered as the third booster dose irrespective of which product was used in the primary schedule.
Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health.
His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award.
Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time.
Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More
