Mixed vaccines Tests can be conducted using both vaccines currently on the ground and those in the pipeline.
Indeed, a regiment which blends two different Covid-19 vaccines can be tested soon to see whether it can help boost the immune response.
These tests can be performed both with vaccines currently available in the country and in the pipeline, learned by The Indian Express.
According to Dr N K Arora, Chairman of the Covid-19 Working Group of the national technical advisory group on immunisation, work “will begin in a few weeks” (NTAGI).
Dr Arora said that as part of the process around eight vaccines may be mixed and matched. The three vaccines that are currently approved for use in the country include Covishield, the Serum Institute of India, Covaxin Bharat Biotech and Sputnik V, a Russian.
As part of the exercise, clinical testing may be conducted through collaboration between institutions such as the Indian Council of Medical Research and vaccine companies. Factors like whether different platform-based vaccines can be taken in combination and what vaccines can be administered in the 1st and 2nd dosage are examined.
“We’re looking for a better protection combination of vaccines. Currently, the vaccines used protect against serious diseases but do not provide protection against infections and virus transmission as much as we would have liked,” Dr Arora said.
“There must be considered several factors. In actual circumstances proper research studies must be carried out… It aims at improving immunological protection without adverse effects for the population,” he said.
“Both the vaccines are safe on their own, but it is also important to see if they are safe together… These vaccines are manufactured on different platforms and we do not want to cause complications or problems, so that all vaccines probably cannot be mixed and compared,” he said.
The Covid-19 mixture was discussed in the NTAGI, Covid-19 and Covid-19 Vaccine Administration National Expert Groups (NEGVAC), as it was learned. “Such trials might be incorporated into Covid-19’s existing country immunisation programme,” said Dr Arora. “Discussions have been proposed at all levels on the feasibility and mixing value of Covid-19 vaccines.”
Six Covid-19 vaccines — the Covovax Serum Institute, the Corbevax Biological E, the Zydus Cadila ZyCov-D, the mRNA vaccine from geneva, the Johnson & Johnson bio-E version, and the Covid-19 intra-anasal Bharat Biotech vaccine — are currently in the pipeline. T
his year, the government has been talking to Pfizer to bring their mRNA vaccine into the country.
