DCGI approves clinical trial on mixing Covishield & Covaxin in India post-ICMR's findings

In a development that can have a huge impact on India's vaccination drive, the Drugs Controller General of India has given its go-ahead to a study on mixing Covishield and Covaxin. This comes days after the ICMR observed in a preprint study that a combination of these COVID-19 vaccines elicited better safety and immunogenicity results than two doses of the same vaccine. However, its research was limited to a comparison of 18 persons in Uttar Pradesh who had been accidentally administered the two different vaccines with 40 persons inoculated with Covishield and Covaxin each. 

In this case, the Christian Medical College, Vellore will conduct the clinical trials on 300 healthy volunteers. The DCGI accepted the recommendation of the Subject Expert Committee of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation dated July 29 granting permission to the CMC in this regard. The aim of this study will be to ascertain whether two different vaccine doses can be administered to a person instead of the current practice of administering two shots of the same vaccine. However, the DCGI is yet to approve the mixing of Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and its nasal vaccine candidate. 

COVID-19 vaccination in India

Apart from Covishield and Covaxin, the DCGI has approved Sputnik V, Moderna, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. From June 21 onwards, the Centre has started procuring 75% of the vaccine stock and distributing it to the states for free. Most importantly, this stock is now be used for all adults and not just those aged above 45.

The vaccination drive is gaining pace with 13.45 crore jabs administered in July- a 12.5% increase against June's 11.96 crore inoculations. As per sources, 40 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be available per month by October. This will be possible as a total of 7 vaccines are set to be available by October with Biological E's Corbevax, Zydus Cadila's DNA vaccine and Gennova's mRNA vaccine likely to get approval soon. 

The government has already hinted at vaccinating the entire adult population i.e nearly 90 crore people by December itself. Meanwhile, sources revealed that no booster dose is required for fully vaccinated individuals at least at this juncture. This comes amid reports that a booster dose is required for persons 6-8 months after they have been administered the second dose of the vaccine. A total of 40,38,74,121 persons have been inoculated whereas 11,42,78,372 of them have received the second dose of the vaccine too.