Corana vaccine

A Telangana court has ordered the communist propaganda website The Wire to remove 14 posts it had written critical of Indian pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech and its Covid-19 vaccination Covaxin. The order came after Bharat Biotech filed a defamation suit against The Wire and 12 people linked with it for Rs100 crore.

The court has also barred The Wire, its editor Siddharth Vardarajan, and the individuals named in the suit from publishing any defamatory stories against Bharat Biotech, according to legal portal Bar & Bench.

The company argued in the court that The Wire had published articles that contained false allegations against Bharat Biotech and COVAXIN. The company’s counsel Senior Advocate Vivek Reddy said that the portal published the reports with malicious intent to undermine the reputation of Bharat Biotech.

Reddy said in the court that Bharat Biotech had previously developed vaccines for Tuberculosis, Zika Rotavirus, Chikungunya and Typhoid and received national and global recognition and has now collaborated with leading Government of India institutions to develop the Covid-19 vaccine. The company said that The Wire published a series of articles making fake allegations on authorisation and approvals of Covaxin without checking the facts.

Other than The Wire, the other defendants named in the case are Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, MK Bhanu, Neeta Sanghi, Vasudevan Mukunth, Shobhan Saxena, Florencia Costa, Prem Anand Murugan, Banjot Kaur, Priyanka Pulla, Seraj Ali, and Jammi Nagaraj Rao.

Responding to the arguments, the court noted that even after the government had approved the vaccine, The Wire continued to publish reports against it. The court said that only the Covaxin has been approved for the age group 15 to 18, but the portal still published reports which can lead to vaccine hesitancy.

Therefore, the court ordered The Wire to remove the articles from their website within 48 hours, and also restrained them from publishing any defamatory articles targeting Bharat Biotech and Covaxin.

Responding to the report, Siddharth Varadarajan alleged that a local Andhra Pradesh court has ordered to take down the 14 articles without serving any notice on the portal. Calling the propaganda articles ‘deeply reported’, he claimed that no change was given to them to refute the ‘false claims’ made by Bharat Biotech.

Scientists have devised a new method for identifying the SARS-CoV-2 virus that might lead to tests that are quicker, cheaper, and less likely to produce false findings than current approaches.

Despite the fact that the discovery, which was published in the journal Nano Letters, is still theoretical, the researchers believe that these detectors may be altered to identify nearly any virus.

Existing testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, include fast tests that identify particular viral proteins and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests that take several hours to run, according to a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

However, neither of these tests can quantify the amount of virus present with high accuracy, they said.

Even the gold-standard PCR tests might have false-negative rates of more than 25 per cent, according to the researchers.

The team’s analysis shows the new test could have false negative rates below one per cent.

The test could also be sensitive enough to detect just a few hundred strands of the viral RNA, within just a second, they noted.

The new approach makes use of atomic-scale defects in tiny bits of diamond, known as nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers.

These tiny defects are extremely sensitive to minute perturbations, due to quantum effects taking place in the diamond’s crystal lattice, and are being explored for a wide variety of sensing devices that require high sensitivity.

The new method would involve coating the nanodiamonds containing these NV centers with a material that has been treated to bond only with the specific RNA sequence of the virus.

When the virus RNA is present and bonds to this material, it causes changes in the diamond’s fluorescence that are easily detected with a laser-based optical sensor.

The sensor uses only low-cost materials, and the devices could be scaled up to analyse a whole batch of samples at once, the researchers said.

While this work was based on detailed mathematical simulations that proved the system can work in principle, the team is continuing to work on translating that into a working lab-scale device to confirm the predictions.

Their plan is first to do a basic proof-of-principle lab test, and then to work on ways to optimise the system to make it work on real virus diagnosis applications.

According to a research published in the journal The Lancet, the protection provided by the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, known in India as Covishield, diminishes after three months of taking two doses.

According to a team of researchers led by the University of Edinburgh, the findings imply that booster programmes are needed to help sustain protection against severe illness.

Researchers from Scotland and Brazil looked at data from two million Scots and 42 million Brazilians who had received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which employs an adenovirus, particularly a common cold virus from chimps, to teach the immune system to resist the virus.

In Scotland, when compared with two weeks after receiving a second dose, there was approximately a five-fold increase in the chance of being hospitalised or dying from Covid-19 nearly five months after being double vaccinated.

The decline in effectiveness begins to first appear at around three months, when the risk of hospitalisation and death is double that of two weeks after the second dose, the experts said, while the risk increases three-fold just short of four months after the second vaccine dose. Similar numbers were seen for Brazil.

“Vaccines have been a key tool in fighting the pandemic, but waning in their effectiveness has been a concern for a while. By identifying when waning first starts to occur in the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, it should be possible for governments to design booster programmes that can ensure maximum protection is maintained, said Professor Aziz Sheikh, Director of the University of Edinburgh.

“If eligible for a booster and you have not yet had one, I would highly recommend that you book one soon,” he added.

The study also estimated vaccine effectiveness at similar fortnightly intervals by comparing outcomes of people who have been jabbed with those who are unvaccinated.

However, the experts warned that the figures should be treated with caution because it is becoming harder to compare unvaccinated people to vaccinated people with similar characteristics, particularly among older age groups where so many people are now vaccinated.

Meanwhile, a recent study led by Pune-based BJ Government Medical College (BJMC) and Sassoon hospital revealed high levels of protection (seroprevalence) against Covid-19 in over 500 healthcare workers even three to seven months after taking two doses of Covishield.

The study also showed that the antibody prevalence was above 90 per cent and immunity level was also high months after completion of two doses, suggesting no need for booster doses.

Dr Randeep Guleria, Director of the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), New Delhi, stated on Sunday that the next two or three weeks will reveal how the Omicron form will play out in terms of transmissibility, evading immunity, and severity. He did say, though, that vaccines may be altered to provide protection against future SARS-CoV2 virus types that emerge.

Guleria was addressing at the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration at the 22nd Dr V S Prayag Memorial Oration-2021, which was organised jointly by the Association of Physicians of India and the Dr Shirish Prayag family (YASHADA). Several notable physicians were honoured on the event, including former ICMR epidemiologist Dr R R Gangakhedkar.

In his oration ‘Covid 19 and lungs- lessons learnt and the way forward’, Dr Guleria said the present lot of vaccines can be tweaked so that they can offer protection against newer variants of concern. “The production of a new influenza vaccine each year demonstrates that it is possible to adapt existing vaccines to keep up with viral mutations,” the expert said

Even as immunologists are concerned about the likelihood of emerging mutations that could render the vaccines less effective, the problem can be dealt with by tweaking the vaccines, he said. Focusing on the challenge of vaccine equity, he said it should be ensured that both rich and poor countries had enough doses.

There have been several zoonotic infections, including outbreaks of avian influenza, H1N1 pandemic and Ebola, Zika and Nipah virus, in the recent past. The reasons, according to Dr Guleria, for the rise in these infectious diseases was increasing travel, trade, and connectivity, growing urbanisation, and encroachment into a new environment.

“The whole concept of ‘One health’ becomes very important, wherein animal and human sectors work together to protect health and ensure food safety and security,” he said. “We need to work on solutions at a local and global level to prevent future pandemics keeping in mind the interconnection of human and animal health, the interconnection of human and ecosystem, and the interconnection of animal health and ecosystem,” he added.

On the occasion, Dr Parikshit Prayag, infectious diseases expert at Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, also made a strong case for a booster dose of the Covid vaccine.

Earlier, the event started with a symposium on diabetes. Dr A G Unnikrishnan and Dr Suhas Erande delivered guest lectures.

The 7th API Quest, a quiz for postgraduate medicine residents, was conducted during the event. As many as 31 teams from various cities of Maharashtra, including Mumbai, Aurangabad, Latur, Miraj and Pune, participated in the event conducted by quiz master Dr Nilima Mane. Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune, team won the first prize. The event was organised under the leadership of Dr A L Kakrani, Dr Suresh Shinde, Dr D B Kadam and Dr Mukund Penurkar from API, Pune.

According to persons acquainted with the situation, Zydus Healthcare’s anti-coronavirus disease vaccine, ZyCoV-D, might be included in the national immunisation programme as soon as next week.

“The training of vaccinators who would be administering the shots is nearly complete and the vaccine could be introduced very soon; likely by next week,” said a person aware of the matter on condition of anonymity.

ZyCoV-D, which is world’s first DNA-based and needle-free Covid-19 vaccine, has been approved for emergency use in people 12 years of age and above. However, in the absence of any policies in place on vaccinating children, the Union government has decided to first use the vaccine in adults.

According to the company, the Centre has placed an order of 10 million vaccine doses, at ₹265 per dose. Additionally, ₹93 will be charged as the cost of the needle-free intradermal applicator, which is required to administer the shot. The supplies are being released in a phased manner, according to people familiar with the matter.

ZyCoV-D, which is only the second indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine besides Covaxin, will be initially used in districts of seven states that have low first dose coverage before being rolled out nationwide, one of the people cited above said. The seven states are Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The Central Drugs Laboratory in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh, has cleared for market release close to 250,000 doses of the Zydus vaccine after putting the vials through stringent quality tests.

On August 20, the Drugs Controller General of India granted emergency use authorisation to ZyCoV-D but it is yet to be included in the vaccination drive.

Once rolled out, ZyCoV-D will become the third vaccine being used in the national vaccination programme, along with Covishield and Covaxin.

As on December 16, 87.5% of the eligible population has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine while 57.1% has been fully vaccinated.

Dr. VK Paul, a member of the Niti Aayog, cautioned on Tuesday that current vaccinations may become useless in new conditions.

“It’s possible that our vaccinations may be rendered useless in developing conditions,” he stated. Paul went on to say that vaccines should be developed using the same technology to “target the variation of the day.” “We’ve seen how such questions have arisen in the aftermath of the last three weeks of living with Omicron. It’s possible that some of them are real. He stated, “We still don’t have the final picture.”

“And therefore, there is need for us that we have to be sure about having vaccine platforms that are adaptable quickly. This possibility that we need to tweak for us to remain in the game, so to say, with changing nature of the variants remains valid,” Dr Paul, also a Niti Aayog member, said.

“A much more concerted approach to drug development is required,” Paul said.

Paul said that the priority right now is to make sure that there is universal vaccine coverage and that no one is left behind. He also stressed the need for investments in science to tackle the pandemic.