After the World Health Organization approves emergency use to Covovax, a top scientist from Indian government has suggested it for using as a booster dose to eliminate the threat emerging due to new omicron variant.
One of directors of the government’s genome sequencing monitoring agency INSACOG (Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium), Anurag Agarwal has said,
“induces a strong immune response and has an excellent safety profile.”
The vaccine is developed by Novovax Inc and is being manufactured under the license of Serum Institute of India (SII). It uses spike proteins to teach the body to develop immunity against Covid-19.
Though further studies are still required to know how much effective is Covovax against the omicron, but Covovax provides has greater efficacy than the booster dose Covishield, said Mr Agarwal.
“I do not think that the approved version, based on ancestral spike protein, will be directly very effective against Omicron since its efficacy against Beta was around 50 per cent (much better than AZ though). It is however better than a third dose AstraZeneca/Covishield as a booster,” said the INSACOG director.
Based on the comparison of Covovax’s immune-response against Cov-Boost’s vaccine trial, he said, “The immune boost, after two doses of AZ/Covishield, was far better for this than inactivated virus vaccine in COV-BOOST. Also, rapid modification of protein is possible for variant-specific immune response.”
He further said, the approval by the WHO was a good move and that the Indian government should immediately start rolling out Covovax as a booster dose without wasting any more time.
