Parents flood Belagavi hospital with calls for children’s vaccine

BENGALURU: With the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation granting approval for restricted use of the indigenous ZyCoV-D, a DNA Covid-19 vaccine, in emergency situations in India for children aged 12 years and above, a Belagavi hospital where the vaccine was tested has been flooded with calls from parents seeking inoculation for their children.
Jeevan Rekha Hospital in Belagavi was one of the 25 centres across the country where clinical trials for Zy-CoV-D were conducted. The vaccine is said to be the first DNA vaccine against SARSCoV2 in the world. It was developed by Cadila Healthcare in partnership with the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the Centre’s Mission Covid-19 Suraksha.
Dr Amit Bhate, director, Jeevan Rekha Hospital and principal investigator of the study, said parents are anxious to get their children vaccinated ahead of a possible third wave of infections. He said Jeevan Rekha gets at least 10 calls a day by desperate parents seeking the vaccine for their children.
As per state Covid-19 War Room data, till Sunday (Aug 22), 2.2 lakh children in the age group 10-19 years have tested positive for the disease in Karnataka, and 90 of them have succumbed to the infection.
Emergency use authorization for ZyCoV-D was issued on August 20, based on interim results from Phase-III of the clinical trials involving over 28,000 volunteers. The results showed a primary efficacy of 66.6%.
“Since our hospital was only part of clinical trials, we do not have vaccine doses with us. This is what we tell parents who call us. Parents have to wait until the government makes doses available,” Dr Bhate told TOI.
No side effects
A total of 20 children in the 12-18 age group were part of the trials at the Belagavi hospital. The trials were conducted between February and April this year. A dose consisting of 0.5ml of the vaccine was intradermally administered, and children suffered no major side effects, Dr Bhat said. Three doses of the vaccine were given on Day 0, Day 28 and day 56.
The hospital was also a part of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin clinical trials for adults and some of the children who took part in the Zydus Cadila trial belonged to parents who had volunteered for the Covaxin clinical trial.
“These children volunteered for the trials. As per protocol, both audio and video consent were required before testing the vaccine on them. Parents of all the children were counselled on the vaccine and were fully aware of the risks involved with clinical trials. So far, no side effects have been seen among those children who took the vaccine. Few of the children experience pain in the injected arm and mild fever. None showed any allergic reaction or anaphylaxis,” said Dr Bhate.
Follow up tests
The hospital will follow up on the health of these children for another 18 months to monitor the immune response against the novel coronaviru s. Children who were part of the clinical trial have to visit the hospital periodically for follow up tests which is why a majority of the children who took part in the clinical trial were those from Belagavi itself. However, some were from neighbouring Hubballi and Dharwad. During the trial, single dose vials of Zydus Cadila vaccines of 0.5ml were used. The vaccine needs to be stored at 2-8 degree Celsius.