Covaxin neutralises Covid 617 variant: Dr Fauci

White House Chief Medical Adviser, Anthony Fauci on Tuesday (US time) said that Covaxin, India’s home-grown Covid vaccine produced by Bharat Biotech, has been found efficacious in neutralising the B.1.617 variant or the Indian double mutant strain.

 “Now, this is something where we’re still gaining data daily. But the most recent data was looking at convalescent sera of Covid-19 cases in people who received the vaccine used in India, the Covaxin. And it was found to neutralise the 617 variant,” he said, according to news agency PTI.

“So despite the real difficulty that we›re seeing in India, vaccination could be a very, very important antidote against this,” Dr Fauci told the reporters.

“So I’ll stop there with the final statement. The one thing you can gather from everything I›ve said: that it›s very important to get vaccinated.”

Covaxin—developed by Bharat Biotech in partnership with the National Institute of Virology and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)—was approved for emergency use on 3 January while still in a clinical trial. Nevertheless, as per ICMR, trial results later showed the vaccine had an efficacy of 78%. 

The B.1.617 variant is mostly found in Covid cases in Maharashtra and Delhi. The novel mutant has three new spike protein mutations, and the variant is said to be behind the deadly surge in Covid across India.

On Tuesday, World Health Organisation (WHO) said that B.1.617 variant of Covid-19 is likely contributing to a surge in coronavirus cases in India, as has also been found in over a dozen countries.

The B.1.617 variant of Covid-19 first found in India had as of Tuesday been detected in over 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database «from at least 17 countries», said the UN health agency.

WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic: «Most sequences were uploaded from India, the United Kingdom, USA, and Singapore.»