Study on mixing Covaxin, Covishield doses gets DCGI's approval

New Delhi: The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has given its approval for conducting a study on the mixing of Covaxin and Covishield Covid-19 vaccines in India, news agency PTI reported. The study will be conducted by the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore.

An expert panel of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) on July 29 had recommended granting permission for conducting the study.

The trial will involve 300 healthy volunteers.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has revealed in its study that the combination of Covaxin and Covishield vaccines, the two main vaccines of the COVID-19 vaccination programme, conducted on 18 people, has elicited better safety and immunogenicity results.

In the study, ICMR compared the safety and immunogenicity profile with those individuals who received either Covaxin or Covishield and it showed better results.

The findings of the study suggest that immunization with a combination of an adenovirus vector platform-based vaccine followed by an inactivated whole virus vaccine was not only safe but also elicited better immunogenicity.

Meanwhile, India logged 38,353 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,20,36,511, according to the Union Health Ministry data. There are 3,86,351 active cases in the country.

The death toll has climbed to 4,29,179 with 497 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed. Cumulatively, 51.90 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered under the nationwide vaccination drive.