ZyCoV-D Vaccine: Can Your Child Get It?
ZyCoV-D Vaccine: Zydus Cadila’s 3-dose vaccine ‘ZyCoV-D’ has finally been approved for emergency use by the Central Drugs Authority of India. This vaccine is the world’s first and India’s indigenously developed DNA-based vaccine for COVID-19. The Ahmedabad-based company plans to manufacture 10-12 crore doses of ZyCoV-D annually.
Ever since vaccines for adults have been introduced in the country, there have been apprehensions about the safety of children from the contagious virus. This has been a matter of concern for parents across India. Now, the question is, can your child get the ZyCoV-D vaccine?
Yes, if your child is over 12 years old, he/she will be able to get vaccinated. For the first time, apart from adults, adolescents aged 12-18 years will be vaccinated in India. Details about the availability of the vaccine are yet to be announced. Until now, only people 18 years of age or older were eligible for vaccination against the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, another vaccine from Genova, which is an mRNA vaccine, biological E and Novavax’s vaccine candidate, which will be manufactured by Serum Institute of India, are in the pipeline. Recently Dr. Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS had said that the data for Phase II and III trials of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin in the age group of 2 to 18 years is expected by September.
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What is the efficacy of ZyCoV-Dvaccine?
Phase III clinical trials were conducted on more than 28,000 volunteers. Interim results of the trials showed a primary efficacy of 66.6 percent for symptomatic RT-PCR positive cases. This is the largest ever vaccine trial for Kovid-19 in India. The vaccine had already demonstrated strong immunogenicity and tolerability and safety profile in previously conducted adaptive phase I/II clinical trials. The Phase I/II and Phase III clinical trials are supervised by an independent Data Security Monitoring Board (DSMB).
How does it react to the body?
When infected, the 3-dose vaccine produces the spike protein of the SARS-CoV2 virus and elicits an immune response, which plays an important role in virus clearance as well as protection against disease. The plug-and-play technology on which the plasmid DNA platform is based can be readily adapted to deal with mutations with viruses, such as those already occurring.
ZyCoV-D Vaccine – In Brief
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