Bharat Biotech's nasal vaccine to be available as booster for 18+ as India readies for another pandemic test

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With India on alert amid a Covid-19 boom in China and several other countries, Bharat Biotech’s first-of-its-kind needle-free intranasal vaccine will now be available as a booster dose for all adults, sources told News18.

The Hyderabad-based Covaxin maker’s nasal vaccine will be introduced on Co-WIN by next week, sources said, adding that the pricing is yet to be decided.

Sources also said that the DCGI (Drugs Controller General of India) has given its go-ahead to the completion of vaccine trials and the formal announcement regarding the development will be made in the coming days. This comes as three cases of Omicron sub-variant BF.7, which has been apparently driving China’s current surge of Covid cases, were detected in India.

The nasal vaccine, BBV154 or Incovacc, had last month received a green signal from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) under restricted use in an emergency situation for the 18+ population in India as heterologous booster doses.

In heterologous boosting, a person is administered a different vaccine from the one that was used for the primary dose series.

Bharat Biotech had at the time said that its Covid-19 intranasal vaccine, Incovacc, has proven to be safe, well-tolerated, and immunogenic in subjects in controlled clinical trials phase III.

The nasal vaccine uses a chimpanzee cold virus to deliver a harmless copy of the coronavirus spike protein to the lining of the nose. It has been specifically formulated to allow intranasal delivery and has been developed in partnership with Washington University St Louis, which had designed and developed the recombinant adenoviral vectored constructs and evaluated them in preclinical studies for efficacy.

According to Bharat Biotech, the intranasal vaccine has several advantages because the nasal route has excellent potential for vaccination due to the organized immune systems of the nasal mucosa. It is also non-invasive and needle-free and has ease of administration since it does not require trained healthcare workers.

India has been on alert after China, the US and Japan, among other countries, reported a massive surge in Covid-19 cases. Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Thursday said that the Centre is committed to tackling the pandemic and urged states to enforce Covid-appropriate behaviour in public spaces in wake of the festive season.

Addressing both Houses of Parliament during the ongoing Winter Session, the Minister told parliamentarians that the Central government was keeping an eye on the global Covid-19 situation and taking steps accordingly. He also advised the states to increase genome sequencing to track new variants timely.