Covaxin

Que. What is ‘Covaxin’ and how was it

developed?

 The vaccine candidate was developed by BBIL in collaboration with the National Institute of Virology (NIV). NIV isolated a strain of the novel coronavirus from an asymptomatic Covid-19 patient and transferred it to BBIL early in May. The firm then used it to work on developing an “inactivated” vaccine — a vaccine that uses the dead virus — at its high-containment facility in Hyderabad.

“Once the vaccine is injected into a human, it has no potential to infect or replicate, since it is a killed virus. It just serves to the immune system as a dead virus and mounts an antibody response towards the virus,” said the company, adding that inactivated vaccines usually have a proven safety record.

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