Hyderabad: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV) researchers on Wednesday said the first indigenously developed Covid vaccine ‘Covaxin’ can effectively neutralise the ‘double mutant’ Covid variant, which is being linked to the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.
“ICMR-NIV has recently been successful in isolating and culturing the double mutant strain B.1.617 of SARS CoV-2 identified in certain regions of India and several other countries. Covaxin has been found to effectively neutralise the double mutant strain as well,” the ICMR on Wednesday said.
In a series of tweets, the top research institute, which along with NIV has collaborated with Bharat Biotech to develop Covaxin, said that “NIV has also demonstrated the neutralisation potential of Covaxin against the UK and Brazil variants.”
The researchers at NIV, Pune have already isolated and cultured multiple variants of concern of SARS-CoV-2 in India, including B.1.1.7 (UK variant), B.1.1.28 (Brazil variant) and B. 1.351 (South African variant).
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