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NEW DELHI, 23 Dec:<\/strong> Bharat Biotech’s intranasal Covid vaccine has been approved by the union health ministry as a booster dose for those aged 18 years and above and is likely to be introduced on the Co-WIN platform on Friday evening, official sources said.<\/p>\n The needle-free vaccine will be available at private hospitals as of now.<\/p>\n It is likely to be rolled out in the national Covid vaccination programme soon, they said.<\/p>\n The ministry’s approval for the intranasal vaccine comes amid a spurt in Covid cases in China and some other countries.<\/p>\n The nasal vaccine – BBV154 – had received approval of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) in November for restricted use in an emergency situation for those above 18 years as a heterologous booster dose.<\/p>\n “The vaccine, branded as iNCOVACC, is likely to be introduced on the Co-WIN platform Friday evening onwards. For now it will be available in private hospitals,” an official source said.<\/p>\n iNCOVACC is a recombinant replication deficient adenovirus vectored vaccine with a pre-fusion stabilised spike protein. This vaccine candidate was evaluated in Phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials with successful results, the Hyderabad-based vaccine-maker had said in a statement.<\/p>\n Clinical trials were conducted to evaluate iNCOVACC as a primary dose schedule as well as a heterologous booster dose for subjects who have previously received two doses of either Covishield or Covaxin.<\/p>\n iNCOVACC was developed in partnership with the Washington University, St Louis, which had designed and developed the recombinant adenoviral vectored construct and evaluated in preclinical studies for efficacy.<\/p>\n Product development related to preclinical safety evaluation, large-scale manufacturing scale up, formulation and delivery device development, including human clinical trials were conducted by Bharat Biotech.<\/p>\n Product development and clinical trials were funded in part by the government of India through the biotechnology department’s Covid Suraksha programme.<\/p>\n The government has advised those eligible to take the precaution dose and follow Covid-appropriate behaviour, including wearing masks and social distancing.<\/p>\n States to undertake mock drill<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, states and union territories will undertake a mock drill across all health facilities on Tuesday to ensure the operational readiness of the Covid-dedicated facilities, with a specific focus on oxygen plants, ventilators, logistics and human resources, according to official sources.<\/p>\n The states have been asked to strengthen surveillance in accordance with the surveillance strategy already issued (health facility-based sentinel surveillance; pan-respiratory virus surveillance; community-based surveillance; and sewage\/wastewater surveillance).<\/p>\n They have also been asked to ensure ramping up of the testing infrastructure, encourage precautionary dose uptake and ensure adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour in view of the upcoming festive season and the New Year.<\/p>\n They have also been advised to ramp up whole genome sequencing and ensure that a large number of samples are sent for the same. (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW DELHI, 23 Dec: Bharat Biotech’s intranasal Covid vaccine has been approved by the union health ministry as a booster dose for those aged 18 years and above and is likely to be introduced on the Co-WIN platform on Friday evening, official sources said. The needle-free vaccine will be available at private hospitals as of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-207687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}