'Single-minded focus on safety first, followed by efficacy': Bharat Biotech highlights 5 key milestones of COVAXIN

Bharat Biotech said on Thursday that its COVID-19 vaccine COVAXIN was developed with a "single-minded focus on safety first, followed by efficacy". The biotechnology company took to microblogging site X (formerly Twitter) to highlight a few milestones achieved by COVAXIN, an indigenous COVID-19 vaccine developed by the firm in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). 

Here are five key things Bharat Biotech said:

• COVAXIN was the only COVID-19 vaccine in the central government’s coronavirus immunisation programme to have conducted efficacy trials in the country
• COVAXIN was evaluated in more than 27,000 subjects as part of its licensed process
• It was licensed under restricted use in clinical trial made, where detailed safety reporting was carried out for several hundred thousand subjects
• The safety of COVAXIN was also evaluated by the Ministry of Health
• Ongoing safety monitoring was continued throughout the product life cycle of COVAXIN

"All the above studies and safety follow-up activities have demonstrated an excellent safety record for COVAXIN, without any vaccine-associated incidents of blood clots, thrombocytopenia, TTS, VITT, pericarditis, myocarditis etc.," Bharat Biotech wrote.

Bharat Biotech also said that its team was "well aware that while the efficacy of COVID vaccines may be short-lived, the impact on patient safety could last a lifetime".

"Safety is always the primary focus for all our vaccines," it added.

What is COVAXIN?

COVAXIN is an inactivated vaccine, meaning it uses killed viral particles to stimulate an immune response in the body. It contains the whole virus, which has been inactivated to prevent replication.