An assessment of the strategy and status of COVID-19 vaccination in India

Abstract

The COVID-19 disease continues to cause devastation for almost 3 years of its identification. India is one of the leading countries to set clinical trials, production, and administration of COVID-19 vaccination. Recent COVID-19 vaccine tracker record suggests that 12 vaccines are approved in India, including protein subunit, RNA/DNA, non-replicating viral vector, and inactivated vaccine. Along with that 16 more vaccines are undergoing clinical trials to counter COVID-19. The availability of different vaccines gives alternate and broad perspectives to fight against viral immune resistance and, thus, viruses escaping the immune system by mutations. Using the recently published literature on the Indian vaccine and clinical trial sites, we have reviewed the development, clinical evaluation, and registration of vaccines trial used in India against COVID-19. Moreover, we have also summarized the status of all approved vaccines in India, their associated registered clinical trials, manufacturing, efficacy, and their related safety and immunogenicity profile.

Keywords: Covaxin; Covishield; SARS-CoV-2; Sputnik; Vaccination.

Fig. 1

Various platforms of approved Indian COVID-19 vaccine in India

Fig. 2

Methodology used for Covaxin preparation. This figure was prepared using BioRender software. It involved 4 major steps: transfection, virus chemical inactivation, cell harvesting, and protein purification

Fig. 3

Methodology used for Covishield preparation. This figure was prepared using BioRender software. The steps in preparing Covishield are as follows: 1. Spike cloning into adenovirus vector backbone, 2. transfection, and 3. translation and protein purification