More than two weeks after a volunteer in the Serum Institute of India (SII)’s clinical trial for the Covishield vaccine claimed that the vaccine had made him seriously ill, SII has done little to clear the air. This, even as the company applied on Sunday to the Indian drug regulator for emergency permission to sell its vaccine in the country.
The company initially responded to the volunteer’s demand for compensation by calling his claims malicious, and threatening to sue him for Rs 100 crore. They argued that there was “absolutely no correlation” between the vaccine and the volunteer’s medical condition, and that this fact had been conveyed to him. But SII’s categorical assertions have raised further questions.
How did the company decide that the vaccine was entirely unrelated to the volunteer’s illness? Further, why didn’t SII pause the Covishield trial when it was investigating this link? After all, AstraZeneca, the UK-based company, whose vaccine was being trialled…