Covavax trials for children to begin in July

Bengaluru: The Serum Institute of India (SII) is planning to launch Covavax- a version of US firm Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate- by this September in the country.

Sources also informed that the institute will start the clinical trials of the Novavax vaccine for kids in July this year.

Lately this week, Novavax said in a statement that its vaccine candidate ‘NVX-CoV2373’ showed 100 per cent protection against moderate and severe diseases, 90.4 per cent overall efficacy and met the primary endpoint in its PREVENT-19 pivotal Phase 3 trial.

The US-based firm also said that the vaccine showed 93 per cent efficacy against predominantly circulating variants of concern and variants of interest.

On Tuesday, the government said that the efficacy of Novavax is promising and encouraging. Its clinical trials are about to be completed in India. The preparatory work is already accomplished by the Serum Insititute of India and they are also conducting a bridging trial which is in advanced stages of completion.

It said, “I am also hoping that they will also start trials on children which is of special interest to all of us. The pace of vaccination should see a renewed energy from next week onwards when we will realign our efforts, state efforts and effective scale-up at ground level is expected. Teams both at the Centre and state are working on building new guidelines for high-speed coverage of the vaccination across the country.”