Hope to expand immunization coverage in poor countries.
According to a study published Thursday in
The Lancet,
the Covaxin vaccine is "very effective against symptomatic Covid-19 (...) in adults".
The authors add that it is also "well tolerated" and without noticeable serious side effects.
The WHO has already approved it urgently a few days ago based on this study.
This is the first vaccine developed by India against Covid-19.
Produced by the Bharat Biotech group, Covaxin had thus joined the anti-Covid vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm and Sinovac on the WHO list.
The study, carried out among 25,000 people who have either received the vaccine or a placebo, shows that there are about three quarters of fewer Covid cases among those vaccinated.
This efficacy is lower than that initially observed for the messenger RNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, but remains high.
Covaxin requires less logistics than messenger RNAs
This vaccine is particularly interesting for poor and developing countries, because it requires less logistics than those with messenger RNA.
The latter must be stored at very low temperatures, which requires significant logistical capacities.
The arrival of Covaxin could therefore "improve the insufficient supply of vaccines which disproportionately affects low and middle income countries", greet in a comment the Chinese researchers Jing-Xin Li and Feng-Cai Zhu, who did not not participated in the study.
Its efficacy on the Delta variant unproven
They note, however, some limitations: the trials were only conducted in India, "which makes the cohort studied less ethnically diverse and limits the possibility of generalizing these results to other populations".
Above all, the study was carried out from November 2020 to January 2021, before the generalization of the Delta variant, which is more contagious and therefore potentially more resistant to vaccination.
Despite the early date of the trials, the researchers were, however, able to identify which patients were already infected with the Delta variant at the time.
In the vaccinated group, their proportion is two-thirds lower than the placebo group, which suggests a priori that the vaccine is less effective against this variant but remains protective.
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