New COVID vaccine 'Covovax' by SII & Novavax likely coming in September; kids trials soon

As India continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Serum Institute of India (SII) is expected to begin clinical trials of the Novavax vaccine for children in July of this year. It is important to mention that Novavax will be the fourth COVID-19 vaccine to undergo a clinical trial for children. Vaccines developed by Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila are already conducting clinical trials involving children. Children are also part of the clinical trials being conducted for the nasal vaccine developed by Hyderabad-

SII hopes to introduce Covavax in India by September: Sources

Sources have informed that the Serum Institute of India hopes to introduce Covavax in the country by September, which is the branding under which US firm Novavax's COVID vaccine candidate will be marketed. 

Novavax Inc, which has a vaccine manufacturing agreement with SII, said on Monday its COVID-19 vaccine candidate was highly effective with 90.4 per cent efficacy overall and also showed high efficacy against predominantly circulating variants. The vaccine demonstrated 93 per cent efficacy against predominantly circulating variants of concern and variants of interest, Novavax said.

Novavax said in a statement that the vaccine candidate, 'NVX-CoV2373', demonstrated 100 per cent protection against moderate and severe disease, 90.4 per cent efficacy overall and met the primary endpoint in its PREVENT-19 pivotal Phase 3 trial.

On Tuesday, the government said the efficacy data of the Novavax vaccine against COVID-19 is promising and encouraging and its clinical trials are in an advanced stage of completion in India. NITI Aayog member (health) VK Paul said the data available in the public domain also indicates the vaccine is safe and highly effective.

Serum Institute of India to produce Novavax

With Serum Institute of India, Novavax is all set to launch in India and its vaccine jabs can be expected by September 2021. According to a press release issued by Novavax, the Serum Institute of India will manufacture ~1 billion doses of NVX-CoV2373 this year. India will probably be the first country to launch the vaccine. Trials found it effective against the Alpha variant which was first found in India with 86% efficiency. 

On June 14, the company had announced, its COVID-19 vaccine of having over 93 per cent efficacy against the predominantly circulating virus variants of concern and variants of interest and offered 100 per cent protection against moderate and severe disease. The Government has already accommodated 20 crore Covovax doses for India for the inoculation drive which is expected between September to December. To evaluate the efficiency, the Novavax study was enrolled with 29,960 participants across 119 sites in the US and Mexico.

COVID-19 situation in India

India has so far recorded over 2,97,00,313 positive cases, out of which, 2,84,91,670 have successfully recovered and 3,81,903 have died. As per the latest reports from MoHFW, in the past 24 hours, 67,208 new cases, 1,03,570 fresh recoveries and 2,330 deaths have been reported. Currently, the total number of active cases in the country is 8,26,740. 

(Image: Twitter- @SerumInstituteOfIndia, PTI, Shutterstock)