Biological E's Corbevax vaccine granted approval for use in children aged 12-18

Hyderabad: The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) on Monday approved Hyderabad-based Pharmaceutical company Biological E's Covid vaccine, Corbevax, for use among children in 12-18 years age group.

The move makes Corbevax the second covid vaccine to be approved for administration to children in India.

Corbevax is India's first indigenously developed Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) Protein sub-unit vaccine against the coronavirus infection.

The DCGI, in December last year, had approved Corbevax for restricted use in emergency situation among adults.

The Corbevax vaccine is administered through intramuscular route with two doses scheduled 28 days apart and is stored at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius temperatures and presented as 0.5 ml (single dose) and 5 ml (10 doses) vial pack.

Meanwhile, the vaccine is safe and offers good immunogenicity and higher antibody levels than some other vector vaccines, said Dr N K Arora, Chairman, India's COVID-19 Working group of National Technical Advisory Group on immunisation (NTAGI).

In an interview with ANI, Dr N K Arora said, "Protein subunit vaccines are safe vaccines, the immunogenicity is very good and local reactions are also less as compared to some of the other vaccines like vector vaccine or mRNA vaccine. Another very important dimension about this vaccine is that compared to some of the vector vaccines, the antibody levels are much higher."

Dr Arora also said that the Corbevax vaccine worked well on even heterologous groups during clinical trials.

"When this is given as a heterologous boost, it works very well. So I would say Corbevax, as a protein subunit vaccine, is a very welcome addition to the Indian vaccine scenario for COVID."