Prognosis

India’s Covaxin Found 77.8% Effective in Lancet Covid Study

  • Vaccine’s approval earlier this year in India prompted furor
  • WHO granted emergency approval to Covaxin shot last week
A dose of Covaxin vaccine.Photographer: Sumit Dayal/Bloomberg
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Covaxin, a vaccine developed by India’s medical research agency and Bharat Biotech International Ltd., was 77.8% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in an interim analysis of a long-awaited study.

Covaxin, which uses traditional, inactivated-virus technology, induced a robust antibody response two weeks after the second dose was given, the investigators concluded. No severe adverse events or vaccine-related deaths occurred during the randomized trial involving 24,419 adults. The research, conducted between November 2020 and May 2021 in India, was published in The Lancet.