E-Paper
What if Covishield and Covaxin mix fails? Cyrus Poonawalla presents 2 scenarios
Both the companies can blame each other for the failure, Cyrus Poonawalla said explaining why he is not in favour of Covid vaccine cocktail.
If the mix of Covishield and Covaxin fails, Serum Institute of India can claim that the other vaccine was not good, while the other company can also say that Serum's vaccine is not good, Serum's chairman Dr Cyrus Poonawalla said expressing his reservation against cocktail of Covid-19 vaccines, the study of which has been granted by the Drugs Control General of India. "I am against the mixing of two different vaccines. There is no need to mix two different vaccines," the senior Poonawalla said.
Covishield, developed by Astrazenaca and Oxford University and manufactured by Serum Institute in India is an adenovirus vector platform-based vaccine. Bharat Biotech's Covaxin, the other main vaccine in India's immunisation programme, is an inactivated whole virus vaccine.
"If cocktail vaccines are administered and if the result is not good, then SII may say that another vaccine was not good, vice versa, the other company might say that since you mixed Serum's vaccine, it did not give desired results," Poonawalla said.
While several international studies are championing for a concktail of vaccines, Cyrus Poonawalla doubted a cocktail of Covishield and Covaxin and said the efficacy of this approach has not been proven in field trials involving thousands of participants.
A recent study of the Indian Council of Medical Research has revealed that those who were mistakenly administered by one dose of Covishield and another dose of Covaxin reported no adverse impact. In fact, their antibody response was higher than those who were given two doses of the same vaccine.
According to experts, as scientific research on the scope and possibilities of Covid vaccine is an evolving area, there is no hard and fast rule unless tried. Theoratically, the mixing of Covishield and Covaxin is possible, experts said.
