India Coronavirus Dispatch: Common symptoms for Covaxin and Covishield

A test that can be altered to 'identify mutant strains', 'nanobodies' to fight novel coronavirus, role of nutrition in immune response-news relevant to India's fight against Covid-19

Common symptoms for Covaxin and Covishield

As India began an unprecedented vaccination drive to combat Covid-19, a report in The Quint breaks down the Centre's factsheet on symptoms associated with Covaxin and Covishield and more.

For Covishield pain or tenderness at the injection site, fatigue, muscle pain, discomfort, an elevation of body temperature, chills and nausea are the mild adverse events that one may experience after the vaccine has been administered. The advisory from the Centre says paracetamol can be given in such cases. Bharat Biotech, the firm that has developed Covishield, claimed that no serious adverse event has been reported in Phase 1 and Phase 2 of its clinical trials, the report said.

For Covaxin, injection site pain, fatigue, fever, headache, body ache, nausea, abdominal pain, dizziness, sweating, cold and cough are the common adverse events. In case a vaccine recipient develops any symptoms they are recommended to contact a physician. 1075 is the 24x7 Covid-19 hotline for any queries about vaccination, the report said. Read more here

India's vaccination drive underway, but not without controversy

With the goal of inoculating 300 million people by July, India on Saturday launched one of the world's largest vaccination campaigns. But, what might have been a triumph for the country's vaccine industry has been dogged with controversy, the Washington Post reported.

Anant Bhan, a public health and bioethics expert, told the Washington Post that "A lot of conjecture" remains around how regulators arrived at the decision to greenlight Bharat Biotech's vaccine Covishield in the absence of efficacy data. Regulators raised many unanswered questions by granting approval to Bharat Biotech's vaccine in "clinical trial mode."

Covishield “incredibly safe but I don’t know if the d--- thing works,” a top expert on India's vaccine industry told the Washington Post. Both vaccines that have been approved are "less than ideal" the expert added, since the data on AstraZeneca vaccine showed huge variations, in part due to a dosing mistake. Read more here

Covid test that can be altered to 'identify mutant strains'

Bengaluru-based research organisation The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) has developed a test for Covid-19 that does not need a PCR machine and can be tweaked to detect mutant strains of the novel coronavirus, according to a report in The Print. The test, called PHANTOM, does not need DNA amplification which is a requirement in RT-PCR and produces results with similar accuracy. The test was developed in collaboration with the research body Institute for Stem Cell Science & Regenerative Medicine (DBT-inStem). Read more here

OPINION: Good nutrition key for a robust immune response

The age, nutritional status, and underlying health conditions in the vaccine recipient will factor into the duration of protection offered by the vaccine, said President of Public Health Foundation of India K Srinath Reddy in an opinion piece for The Indian Express. An inoculant only provides the antigenic stimulus for the body to react. But, the effectiveness of the reaction is influenced by the nutritional status of people. For instance, deficiency in vital nutrients may lead to a less than robust response. The more durable component of the body’s immune response, cellular immunity, is also affected by nutrition, Reddy said. Read more here

‘Nanobodies’ to fight novel coronavirus

A team of international researchers led by the University of Bonn has identified and developed antibody fragments called "nanobodies" to combat the novel coronavirus, according to a report in The Indian Express.

The results of the study, which have been published in the journal Science, showed that the fragments are significantly smaller than classic antibodies. Therefore they can penetrate tissue better and can be produced more easily in larger quantities. Read more here