Covaxin works on coronavirus variant from UK- India’s Covid-19 vaccine "neutralise” the UK variant

India’s homegrown vaccine ‘neutralises’ strain, dispelling speculation that the mutant might evade vaccine-generated antibodies

A medic administers Covaxin at JJ Hospital in Mumbai on Wednesday: PTI

G.S. Mudur   |   TT   |   New Delhi   |   28.01.21 : India’s homegrown Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin, generates immune responses against the fast-spreading coronavirus variant from the UK, scientists said on Wednesday after a study that they say should dispel speculation that the mutant might evade vaccine-generated antibodies.

The study at the National Institute of Virology, Pune, has found that antibodies generated by Covaxin “neutralise” the UK variant that displays multiple mutations and had stirred concerns in some scientific circles that it might be able to resist effects of vaccines.

The NIV researchers collaborating with the vaccine maker Bharat Biotech extracted sera from 38 recipients of Covaxin and observed through lab experiments that the vaccine-generated antibodies were able to neutralise the UK variant as efficiently as other novel coronavirus variants.

“It is unlikely that the (UK) variant would be able to dampen the potential benefits of the vaccine,” Pragya Yadav, a scientist at the NIV, a unit of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and her colleagues said in a preprint paper on bioRxiv but not peer-reviewed yet.

Covaxin is the third in the club of Covid-19 vaccines shown through lab studies as capable of neutralising the UK variant. Over the past week, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have also independently announced that their vaccines retain neutralising activity against the UK variant.

Several research groups across the world have in recent weeks expressed concern that the emerging mutant coronavirus variants — the UK version marked by a mutation designated 501Y and others — could escape antibodies and reduce the efficacy of vaccines.

“The UK variant doesn’t appear to be a problem for vaccines — but another emerging coronavirus variant from South Africa could be a challenge,” said Shahid Jameel, a senior virologist and director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University, Sonipat (Haryana).

Scientists in recent weeks have tracked another coronavirus variant with a mutation designated E484, seen in South Africa and other countries, including India. The E484 variant is capable of evading three antibodies and thus appears to have a better chance at escaping vaccine actions than the UK variant.

But such concerns about certain variants evading immune responses are for now “largely hypothesis-driven”, Nikhil Patkar, associate professor at the Tata Memorial Centre Advanced Centre for Treatment Research and Education in Cancer, Navi Mumbai, told The Telegraph.

Patkar and his colleagues at ACTREC had last year detected three cases of the E484 variant in Maharashtra.

The ICMR, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and the department of biotechnology have initiated a genome surveillance initiative that will sequence 5 per cent of coronavirus samples nationwide to gain insights into the variants circulating across the country.