The Central government is planning to study the mixing of two different Covid vaccine and also the effectiveness of a single dose of Covishield which is being used in two doses. Sources told that a study on mixing two different vaccines will start in a month and will likely be completed in two to two and half months.
The Centre will assess vaccine data recorded on a new App, which will make it easier to report adverse events after vaccination. The platform, which is to be linked to CoWin, will allow people to flag their worries after a shot, after which a district officer will follow up on the cases. The effort is to make this a permanent platform that can be used for other new and emerging diseases that require vaccinations in the future.
Recently, after 20 people were accidentally injected with two different vaccines, the centre had ruled out any cause for concern.
The idea is to study aspects like breakthrough infections following vaccinations and the severity of infections post-immunisation. Another aim of the review is to understand whether a single dose is effective.
Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose vaccine is also based on the viral vector platform, while the two-dose Sputnik vaccine — based on the same technology — is now also being offered as a single-dose option.
A single-dose regimen would help the government cover the population faster with its vaccination drive, which has slowed down due to a shortage.
Covishield is the Indian version of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine. Incidentally, at the same time that India decided to increase the dosing interval for Covishield to 12 weeks citing real-life evidence from the UK that has reduced the dosing interval of the AstraZeneca vaccine to eight weeks to ensure the full protection of its vulnerable population.
A study presented to the UK government emphasized that two doses provided better protection against specific variants of the virus than a single dose.
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Covishield, which is the main Covid vaccine in use in India, accounts for nearly 90 per cent of the 208.89 million doses administered since January 16. India has also been using Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin in its vaccination drive while Russia’s Sputnik V, which had obtained approval for emergency use, is being administered to fewer people as part of a pilot rollout.