Bharat Biotech's Covaxin 81pc efficient in Phase 3 trials

Vaccine major Bharat Biotech on Wednesday said its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin has demonstrated an interim vaccine efficacy of 81 percent in Phase 3 clinical trials.

The trials involved 25,800 subjects, the largest-ever conducted in India, in partnership with the Indian Council of Medical Research, the Hyderabad-based company said in a statement.

"Today is an important milestone in vaccine discovery, for science, and our fight against coronavirus. With today's results from our Phase 3 clinical trials, we have now reported data on our COVID-19 vaccine from Phase 1, 2, and 3 trials, involving around 27,000 participants," Bharat Biotech Chairman and Managing Director Krishna Ella said.

Bharat Biotech's Covaxin, which has been indigenously developed in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), demonstrates a high clinical efficacy trend against COVID-19 but also significant immunogenicity against the rapidly emerging variants, he added.

Covaxin and Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield are the two vaccines that are being administered in India.

A total of 1,28,630 beneficiaries more than 60 years and 18,850 individuals in the category of 45 and above with co-morbidities took the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a provisional report by the health ministry, as the cumulative number of anti-coronavirus vaccine doses administered in the country crossed 147 lakh.

Also, the ministry said 25 lakh potential beneficiaries were registered on the Co-WIN portal on Monday, of which 24.5 lakh are citizens while the remaining were healthcare and frontline workers.

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Amid reports of glitches and some people saying they were finding it difficult to navigate the Co-WIN 2.0 app to register and book an appointment, the ministry clarified to say the app on the Play Store is meant for use only by administrators. Registration and booking for appointments have to be done through the portal, it said.

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)