New Delhi, 12/9: The homegrown Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin on Thursday received long-awaited scientific credence with one of the world’s top medical journals publishing the final trial results showing its ability to offer 78 per cent protection against symptomatic Covid-19 and 93 per cent against severe disease.
The indigenous vaccine’s phase 3 clinical trial carried out in 25 hospitals between November 2020 and May 2021 involving 24,419 participants aged 18-97 years found that two doses of the vaccine have an efficacy of 77.8 per cent against symptomatic Covid-19 infection after two weeks, according to the interim analysis of the trial data published in the Lancet.
“We estimated vaccine efficacy of 77·8 per cent against symptomatic Covid-19 disease and, importantly, based on the limited data available, a higher efficacy against severe Covid-19 of 93·4 per cent. Thus, cases of severe disease, which require hospitalisation and have threatened to overwhelm health-care facilities, could be markedly decreased in fully vaccinated populations,” reported the Covaxin team that includes researchers from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), National Institute of Virology, Pune and Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad, the manufacturer of the vaccine.