NEW DELHI – India’s Bharat Biotech said its Covid-19 vaccine proved 81% effective in protecting people in a large clinical trial, a report that could reinvigorate vaccination efforts and vaccine diplomacy in India.
Bharat Biotech is one of the largest vaccine producers in the world, but it is little known outside the sector. She has been developing a Covid-19 vaccine since the first half of 2020, which New Delhi approved for emergency use this year. India has already administered the vaccine to more than one million people.
Many Indians, however, said they were reluctant to obtain footage from Bharat Biotech as they wanted to wait for the results of the final stage tests. India’s vaccination campaign is going much slower than anticipated and some health professionals said that one reason was that people did not feel confident about the Bharat Biotech vaccine.
Lining up for doses of Covid-19 in New Delhi last month.
Photograph:
T. Narayan / Bloomberg News
The company said it wants to clarify any concerns about the announcement on Wednesday. The interim results from his Phase 3 trial – which gave 25,800 people aged 18 to 98 their vaccine or placebos – suggest that it is effective against Covid-19. The company added that there is early evidence that it is also effective against the most contagious variant of coronavirus in the UK.
“Today is an important day for us, the company and also for the country and Indian science,” said Krishna Ella, president and managing director of Bharat Biotech.
More than 11 million people have been confirmed infected in India, a number surpassed only by the United States. While fewer Indians per capita are being killed by the virus, the country’s economy is among the hardest hit.
India is in the midst of what may be the most ambitious vaccination campaign in the world. He is trying to get photos of 300 million of his more than 1.3 billion citizens by August. So far, it has administered about 15 million doses, most of them the vaccine developed in the UK by Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC and mass produced in India by the Serum Institute of India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi conveyed his confidence in the local vaccine this week when he gave his first injection of the Bharat Biotech version.
“It is remarkable how quickly our doctors and scientists worked to strengthen the global fight against COVID-19,” he tweeted with a photo of him taking the photo.
As highly transmissible variants of the coronavirus spread around the world, scientists are racing to understand why these new versions of the virus are spreading more quickly and what this could mean for vaccine efforts. New research says the key may be the protein spike, which gives the coronavirus its unmistakable shape. Illustration: Nick Collingwood / WSJ
India has emerged as a surprise at the forefront of vaccine diplomacy, moving forward to help mainly developing countries, as well as some wealthy countries, as much of the supplies in the US and Europe have been allocated and manufacturers around the world have found something unexpected production bottlenecks.
India has managed to send tens of millions of doses abroad because of the huge production capacity of the Serum Institute of India, which has produced enough AstraZeneca vaccines to supply the local inoculation unit with more than enough for export. It exported more than 45 million doses to about 45 countries, including Canada, Kenya and Cambodia. About 7 million of these doses were donated by the Indian government.
With the results of Phase 3, Bharat Biotech also plans to become a major exporter. He said Wednesday that more than 40 countries are already interested in using his vaccine.
The company is not new to the vaccine race. It has produced billions of doses of other vaccines over the years. She said that her Covid-19 vaccine would be particularly competitive with many on the market because it only needs to be stored in regular refrigerators and the doses can be used up to 28 days after opening the bottle. Other vaccines generally need to be used within hours of opening, which means that any dose that is not used in a day must be discarded.
The Bharat Biotech vaccine was developed in conjunction with the Indian Medical Research Council, a government organization, which said the success of the final stage trial was a matter of national pride.
“The bench’s journey to the headland of the completely native Covid-19 vaccine in less than eight months shows the immense strength of India’s self-reliance to fight adversity and stand firm in the global public health community,” said Balram Bhargava, director general of the ICMR. “It is also a testament to India’s emergence as a global vaccine superpower.”
—Krishna Pokharel contributed to this article.
Write to Eric Bellman at [email protected]
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