Indian drug maker firm, Bharat Biotech, which is facing allegations of securing authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin “without phase 3 trials”, Wednesday said that the vaccine “effectively neutralizes” the UK variants of the Coronavirus, which is said to be upto 70 percent more infectious than the normal strain.
“Covaxin effectively neutralizes UK variants of SARS-COV-2 reducing the possibility of mutant vuirus escape,” Bharat Biotech wrote on Twitter.
The drug maker also cited a research saying the researchers had “performed the plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT50) using sera collected from the 26 recipients of BBV152/COVAXINTM against hCoV-19/India/20203522 (UK-variant) and hCoV27 19/India/2020Q111 (heterologous strain)”.
“A comparable neutralization activity of sera of the vaccinated individuals showed against UK-variant and the heterologous strain with similar efficiency, dispel the uncertainty of possible neutralization escape,” it said.