Mexico has one more vaccine to address the health crisis due to COVID-19. This is Covaxin, which has just been approved for emergency use in the country, Marcelo Ebrard, head of the Ministry of Foreign Relations (SRE), reported on Tuesday.
So far, there has been a lot of talk about other vaccines such as those from Pfizer-BioNTech, the Russian Sputnik V or the one from AstraZeneca-Oxford. All of these were advanced in the race and they have already been approved for emergency in Mexico and dozens of other countries for months.
However, what about Covaxin? Here we leave you 10 facts so that you know the vaccine that has just been approved in Mexico.
1. Covaxin is jointly developed by the biotechnology company Bharat Biotech, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology of India (which is part of the ICMR).
2. The Covaxin vaccine received a ‘green light’ for phase 1 and 2 human trials since July 2020.
3. Since that date, the vaccine has progressed positively. In March 2021, in an interim review of phase 3 trials (involving 25,800 participants), Covaxin was shown to be 81 percent effective in preventing COVID-19.
4. The 81 percent efficacy in the aforementioned analysis was observed in those people who had not previously become ill with COVID-19.
5. Covaxin requires a two-dose regimen, common in most COVID vaccines.
6. The second dose of the Covaxin vaccine should be given 28 days after the first dose.
7. Covaxin is from the group of so-called ‘inactivated vaccines’. This means that they contain dead viruses, which are incapable of infecting people; however, they do instruct the immune system to trigger a defensive reaction against an infection, in this case COVID-19.
8. The Covaxin vaccine is easy to store as it does not require freezing temperatures. Doses are stable and smooth in temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.
9. According to the National Institute of Virology of India, Covaxin has also been shown to be effective against COVID variants such as the UK one.
10. The first country on the American continent to approve Covaxin was Guyana. The second is Mexico.
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