NEWS DESK
An study by ICMR has found that combination of Covishield, Covaxin gives better results. The study also found that immunisation with a combination of Covishield and Covaxin was safe, and the adverse effects were also found to be similar when compared to the same dose regimen.
The study involving 98 people, 18 of whom had inadvertently received Covishield as first dose and Covaxin as the second in Uttar Pradesh, showed that combining these two Covid-19 vaccines elicited better immunogenicity than two doses of the same vaccine.
The study also found that immunisation with a combination of Covishield and Covaxin was safe, and the adverse effects were also found to be similar when compared to the same dose regimen.
The study titled ‘Serendipitous Covid-19 Vaccine-Mix in Uttar Pradesh, India: Safety and Immunogenicity Assessment of a Heterologous Regime’ has been uploaded on medRxiv, a preprint server and is yet to be peer reviewed.
“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study which reports the effects of heterologous prime-boost vaccination with an adenovirus vectored vaccine followed by an inactivated whole virus vaccine,” the researchers said.
The immunisation program against Covid-19 in India started with two vaccines–adenovirus vector platform-based vaccine Covishield and inactivated whole virion BBV152 -Covaxin–and homologous prime-boost approach was followed. However, 18 individuals, under the national program, in Siddarthnagar, Uttar Pradesh inadvertently received Covishield as the first jab and Covaxin as the second.
The nationwide vaccination program at this time had entered in its fourth month of its existence and the event of mixed dosing raised considerable anxiety in the public domain with a potential to contributing to vaccine hesitancy.
The study was conducted against this backdrop.