India recorded 62,224 new Covid-19 cases and 2,542 deaths in the last 24 hours. With this, the country’s overall caseload rose to 2.96 crore, while the death toll surged to 3.62 lakh. Kerala is the top contributor, adding 12,246 new cases to the country’s caseload. The newly infected cases of the Covid-19 reported in the country in the last 24 hours are 212 in Delhi, 830 in Mumbai, 1,611 in Bengaluru, 377 in Kolkata and 689 in Chennai. India started its vaccination against the Covid on January 16, 2021. By now, almost 207,830,971 i.e. 15.2% population of the country has successfully been vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine whereas 47,474,395 people i.e. 3.5% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Amid this to stir things up, a new claim is going viral is shared with a communal twist that the Bharat Biotech’s ‘Covaxin’ uses ‘newborn calf’s serum’ in the making of the vaccine. Multiple other claims have been in the public prior to this, many claimed that taking a jab can cause death, while others say there’s the presence of microchips in doses.
The Union Health Ministry said in a statement “Newborn calf serum is used only for the preparation and growth of vero cells. Serum from bovine and other animal are standard enrichment ingredient used globally for vero cell growth.” Vero cells are used to establish cell lives which help in the production of vaccines. This technique has been used for decades in developing vaccines against polio, rabies, and influenza. After growth, the vero cells are washed in water and with chemicals, also technically known as buffer, multiple times to make them free from newborn calf serum. The vero cells are then infected with coronavirus for viral growth, clarified the ministry.
Taking to the viral claim, the company said, “The Vero cells are killed in the process and thereafter this grown virus is also killed (inactivated) and purified. This killed virus is then used to make the final vaccine, and in the final vaccine formulation no calf serum is used.”
The RTI replied to a Twitter user, Vikas Patni, whose Twitter post was widely shared on the platform, quoted the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) saying “newborn calf serum is used in the revival process of Vero cells, which is further used for the production of coronavirus during the manufacturing of Covaxin”. Another study shared along with the RTI query suggests serum is derived from “healthy and slaughtered bovine calves”. Newborn calf serum is the “liquid fraction of clotted blood derived from healthy, slaughtered bovine calves aged less than 20 days, deemed fit for human consumption via ante or post-mortem inspection,” it says. This was explained in a research paper ‘A Method for Differentiating Fetal Bovine Serum from Newborn Calf Serum,’ written by Michelle Cheever, Alyssa Master, and Rosemary Versteegen, in Bioprocessing Journal.
Thus, the viral claim is partially correct and there is absolutely no communal angle to this. As per the research paper, released by the Indian Council of Medical Research and Bharat Biotech, said blood serum from newborn cattle is one of the ingredients used in making Covaxin.
