Can re-engineer Covaxin to beat South African variant: Bharat Biotech

Other vaccine makers, such as Hyderabad-based Biological E, too, have started working on different strains.

As news of mutations in the Sars-CoV-2 virus in different countries surfaces, Indian vaccine maker Bharat Biotech said it can re-engineer the Covaxin in 15 days to neutralise the South African variant, provided it gets the isolated strain from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). 

Krishna Ella (pictured), chairman and managing director (MD) of Bharat Biotech, said, “If ICMR isolates the South African strain, we can easily re-engineer the Covaxin to neutralise the South African strain in 15 days. One just has to switch the strain to get a new version of the vaccine.”

He said public-private partnerships will only speed