Trust DCGI to ask for enough data before vaccine approval: Gagandeep Kang

Having achieved the first goal of seeing whether the vaccines work, we can be more ambitious and design studies to assess whether and how much they reduce transmission, says Kang

Even as leading pharmaceutical companies are seeking authorisation to roll out their coronavirus vaccines in India, the regulator should not give its approval without first obtaining enough data, suggests Gagandeep Kang, a professor at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory of Christian Medical College, Vellore, and one of India's leading medical scientists. “Pfizer has done no trials in India, and Serum has not completed its immunogenicity study,” she says in an emailed interview with Akash Podishetty. Edited excerpts:

A Lancet study shows that the Oxford vaccine's ability to prevent transmission is limited. Even in Pfizer's case, we still don't know of