I actually have sympathy for @BharatBiotech's scientists and the volunteers who took part in their clinical trials so far. They have been let down by bad science and poor regulatory processes. The company should never have submitted #Covaxin for regulatory approval w/o Ph 3 data

That mistake -the original sin, if you like- has led to a series of mis-steps, errors, cover-ups, linguistic contortions, and lack of clarity. The regulator shd have held the #Covaxin approval request and said, "we'll look at it when you have at least some preliminary ph 3 data"

Instead, they clubbed their approval of 3 separate products into one press release. That was Mistake No 3, driven I suspect by the desire to have a wholly Indian offering (Covishield though made in Pune was already labelled, don't forget as an #Angrez product.

But the regulators had this problem: How do you conjure of an efficacy number in the absence of ANY Ph 3 data? They could not and so they didn't. Instead they gave it a half-arsed approval, underwent a linguistic contortion to come up with "Clinical Trial Mode".

The trouble with #AliceInWonderland words and novel phraseology is this: people ask, as indeed they should, "But what does it mean?". Here's the difficulty: No one knows. Not the CEO of @BharatBiotech, not anyone in @MoHFW_India nor indeed anyone in @ICMRDELHI.