Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore is ready with the preliminary results of a study to test the feasibility of mixing Covishield and Covaxin, which were the two main Covid-19 vaccines available in the country. The study results would be shared with the countrys drug regulator.

Winsley Rose, the principal investigator of the study said that they had permission from the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) to unblind the analysis and on Monday they had approached the drug regulator to schedule the time to present the study results. Rose told that the studies were carried out on 200 participants and the results were only preliminary.

CMC Vellore carried out a mixed vaccine study intending to discover, how a fully vaccinated person responds to a booster dose of another vaccine, and how such a person responds to a third dose of the same vaccine. The participants were vaccinated with two doses of Covaxin receive a booster dose of Covishield and those fully vaccinated with Covishield received Covaxin.

Earlier CMC Vellore professor Gagandeep Kang said that the institute was finding it difficult to find enough people to recruit into the study and had reached out to other institutes.

Based on the study results, the government would decide on whether to allow booster shots or not. The trial was approved in July last year by the Drug Controller General of India. India has started administering the same vaccine as a precautionary dose, to senior citizens, healthcare workers and frontline workers.

Mix and match of vaccines were not given a go-ahead by the government due to lack of data on the effectiveness of a different vaccine. Studies are being undertaken to understand whether mixing two Covid-19 vaccines can result in developing stronger and long-lasting immunity against the infection.

Evidence from studies done in some other countries on heterologous vaccination suggested that the combination of viral vector vaccines and mRNA vaccines produced good levels of antibodies against the Covid-19 virus and a higher T-cell response than using the same vaccine (homologous vaccination).

Source: ET Healthworld