{"id":3322,"date":"2021-12-01T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=3322"},"modified":"2021-11-18T03:06:10","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T03:06:10","slug":"covaxin-covid-19-vaccine-achieves-77-8-effectiveness-new-study-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/covaxin-covid-19-vaccine-achieves-77-8-effectiveness-new-study-reveals\/","title":{"rendered":"Covaxin COVID-19 Vaccine Achieves 77.8% Effectiveness, New Study Reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019re a few months short of a full two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and countless lives have been impacted by this blight that has swept over the world. And while recovery is slowly but surely progressing, humanity has quite a ways to go before we can truly say that we\u2019ve left this unfortunate event behind us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the restless effort put up by our experts is the development of vaccines that fight against the virus, primarily to ensure that infected individuals no longer need to fear for their lives. Since the onset of the pandemic, several pharmaceutical companies have put themselves up to the task of developing these vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Several COVID-19 vaccines have been manufactured since the start of the pandemic, and have since helped save millions of lives. From left to right: Tozinameran (Pfizer-BioNTech), Ad26.COV2.S (Janssen), AZD1222 (Oxford AstraZeneca, Fiocruz version), AZD1222 (Oxford AstraZeneca, COVAX supply), CoronaVac (Sinovac, Butantan version), CoronaVac (Sinovac). (Ag\u00eancia Bras\u00edlia, 2021) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the race to develop vaccines for this particular strain of coronavirus is still ongoing, and several entities are still hard at work developing the next vaccines that we may use to fight against the pandemic. One of these said companies is India-based Bharat Biotech International Ltd., who worked together with India\u2019s own medical research agency to produce a new COVID-19 vaccine called Covaxin<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, new results published in the Lancet<\/em> journal reveal that Covaxin has attained a 77.8% efficacy rate in preventing \u201csymptomatic\u201d COVID-19, and was obtained from a Phase 3 clinical trial for the potential new vaccine that began last year. The Phase 3 trial involved some 24,419 randomly-selected participants, and were administered twice, four weeks apart, with either Covaxin or a placebo shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bharat Biotech\u2019s Covaxin COVID-19 vaccine has also been the subject of a number of controversies, both within India and overseas with questioning from the World Health Organization. Despite this, the vaccine has since been given emergency use authorization in several countries like the Philippines, Mexico, and Zimbabwe. (Ramakrishnan. 2021) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Results show that Covaxin also achieved a 63.6% efficacy against asymptomatic COVID-19, and a 93.4% efficacy rate versus \u201csevere\u201d COVID-19. The vaccine also showed no serious adverse effects to its recipients, with only occasional mild side-effects reported. Additionally, preliminary data from other studies show Covaxin to be at least 65% effective in mitigating symptoms from the B.1.617.2 variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, better known as the Delta variant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, unlike the rest of its mRNA-vaccine peers, Covaxin can be safely stored in standard refrigerators, since it only necessitates temperatures of 2-4 \u00b0C (36-46 \u00b0F).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Covaxin also marks one of the few globally-administered COVID-19 vaccines to make use of one of the oldest vaccination technologies, as it is an inactivated whole virus<\/em> vaccine, where chemicals called adjuvants<\/em> are combined with inactivated viral particles to stimulate an immune response in recipients. Similar technology was implemented in developing the first polio and influenza vaccines nearly a century ago. Its fellow \u201cinactivated virus\u201d peers include China\u2019s CoronaVac (Sinovac) and Russia\u2019s CoviVac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read further on our Modern Sciences coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n