Indian Govt Rubbishes ‘Cow Slaughter’ Theories In Covaxin Making

From the past few days, there has been a social media debate on the made-in-India Covid vaccine Covaxin that it contains the newborn calf serum. The government slammed the claims today by clarifying that Covaxin does not contain newborn calf serum even a bit and the calf serum is not an ingredient at all. “In an RTI response, the Modi Govt has admitted that COVAXIN consists of Newborn Calf Serum …..which is a portion of clotted blood obtained from less than 20 days young cow calves, after slaughtering them. THIS IS HEINOUS! This information should have been made public before,” said the tweet by Congress spokesperson, Gaurav Padhi.

The Health Ministry stated that several social media posts have been twisting and misinterpreting the facts falsely claiming that the Covaxin vaccine contains the newborn calf serum. The clarification comes that the newborn calf serum is used only for the preparation and growth of Vero cells. Issuing a clarification, the centre explained – “Vero cells are used to establish cell lives which help in the production of vaccines. This technique has been used for decades in Polio, Rabies, and Influenza vaccines. After the growth of Vero cells, they are washed with water and buffer chemicals to make them free from the newborn calf serum. Then these Vero cells are infected with coronavirus for viral growth. The Vero cells are destroyed in the process of viral growth. This grown virus is also killed (inactivated) and purified”.

These claimed techniques have been used global wide some decades ago in polio, Rabies and Influenza vaccines and Vero cells are destroyed in the process. Thereafter this grown virus is also killed (inactivated) and purified. This killed virus is then used to make the final vaccine. Manufacturer Bharat Biotech also issued a statement – “Newborn calf serum is used in the manufacturing of viral vaccines. It is used for the growth of cells, but neither used in the growth of the SARS CoV2 virus nor in the final formulation. COVAXIN®️ is highly purified to contain only the inactivated virus components by removing all other impurities.”