Bharat Biotech says Covaxin efficacy 81%

NEW DELHI: Covaxin, the first coronavirus vaccine developed in India, has an efficacy rate of 81%, its maker Bharat Biotech said while citing preliminary results from its Phase 3 clinical trials, an announcement that is likely to come as a shot in the arm for India’s vaccination drive.

The vaccine was approved for an emergency roll-out on January 16 before it was established to be effective in preventing Covid-19, but experts as well as authorities pointed to Phase 1 and 2 trials that showed that Covaxin was safe and produced an adequate immune response.

“Today is an important milestone in vaccine discovery, for science and our fight against coronavirus. With today’s results from our Phase 3 clinical trials, we have now reported data on our vaccine from Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials involving around 27,000 participants. Covaxin demonstrates high clinical efficacy trend against Covid-19 but also significant immunogenicity against the rapidly emerging variants,” said Krishna Ella, chairman and managing director, Bharat Biotech.

The results revealed on Wednesday — detailed data is yet to be released or peer-reviewed — are based on an interim analysis when 43 infections took place among the 25,800 people who were part of the trials. Of these, 36 were among those given a placebo,

Bharat Biotech said the interim analysis is based on the following findings:

of of these cases were Covid-19 were were observed observed in reported in the in the placebo the Covaxin trial subjects group group

while seven got the vaccine, translating to an efficacy rate of 80.6%, the company said. PM Narendra Modi and Union health minister Harsh Vardhan both took Covaxin to build faith in the indigenous vaccine, which has met with severe hesitancy, particularly among health workers, for want of efficacy data. Disaggregated data from Delhi, for example, showed in January that turnout at locations administering Covaxin was as low as 25%, while it was 75% for those using Covishield – the domestically produced version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.