Hyderabad: Scientist and entrepreneur Krishna Ella explains Pfizer, Moderna vaccines wouldn’t have passed through the phase three level clinical trial test if they were conducted during the second wave of Covid spread. Ella explained the drawbacks of US pharma giants Pfizer and Moderna at an event conducted by the Technology Development Board (TDB), a body under the Department of Science and Technology.
‘I am telling you honestly. If Pfizer and Moderna (would) have done a phase-three clinical trial during the second wave, they would not have got the license for the product. ‘When they (Pfizer and Moderna) licensed it, there was dominance of the Wuhan strain. So they succeeded in getting 90 percent efficacy then, but now the same vaccine is showing 35 percent efficacy in Israel’, Ella, Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Biotech explained
‘The Delta variant is known to be more virulent than the earlier strains of SARS-CoV2, and Covaxin is the only one vaccine…there was a delay in the regulatory process and we got stuck in the second wave. And (we were) lucky that in the second wave, we almost got 77 per cent efficacy. But had it been the Wuhan strain and not Delta we would have got 85 per cent efficacy,’ :Ella added.
Covaxin is one of the three vaccines that is being administered in the country. The drug regulator has provided Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) to Moderna and Johnson and Johnson vaccines in India.
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