HYDERABAD: A Twitter war broke out between Bharat Biotech’s SARS-CoV-2 project lead Raches Ella and Kolkata-based endocrinologist Awadhesh Kumar Singh, lead researcher of a recent study comparing the immune responses evoked by Covishield and Covaxin in healthcare workers.
While Ella tweeted on limitations in the study on Monday, Singh objected to Ella pointing fingers at their study when Covaxin’s phase 3 results were yet to be published.
The study, conducted on 515 healthcare workers (425 Covishield, 90 Covaxin recipients), said Covishield recipients had a higher sero-positivity rate and average rise in anti-spike antibody (ASA) than those who got Covaxin.
Other Twitterati too weighed in with many demanding that Bharat Biotech publish phase 3 results.
Ella, who also heads business development at Bharat Biotech, expressed surprise at “researchers and media coming to conclusions based on non-peer-reviewed work”.
“Limitation 1: Spike-based IgGs are not appropriate when evaluating Covaxin, which induces broad antibody responses to Spike, N, and M Recommend live virus neutralization,” he said.
“Limitation 2: Past history of Covid was based on verbal response and not by a pre-vaccination IgG test.
The study fails to account for asymptomatics (predominant presentation of Covid) and introduces misclassification bias,” he pointed out.
Singh tweeted: “Brother, whole country is getting vaccinated even without preprint phase 3 results …
We owe a sincere gratitude to Bharat Biotech but that does not mean one should raise finger on others effort.
Of course, we will produce published results finally!” Singh said that to understand the difference between the two vaccines only ASA would help.
Ella said he was “not raising fingers, merely citing limitations…
Salute your efforts…
Phase 3 will be out very soon.”