Congress leader claims Covaxin contains calf serum, govt says facts being twisted

Citing an RTI response, Congress's Gaurav Pandhi claimed that it suggested that newborn calf serum was used by Bharat Biotech to make the Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin. After the tweet went viral on social media, the government dismissed the allegations, while adding that facts have been twisted and misrepresented in the Congress leader's posts.

Congress leader Gaurav Pandhi on Tuesday made sensational claims about the component of Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research. In an RTI response, the Modi Govt has admitted that COVAXIN consists 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. pic.twitter.com/sngVr0cE29 According to this research doc, this is how cow calf serum is obtained.https://t.co/hIVTUULKUC pic.twitter.com/kP12tcUW7l Pl delete this tweet. 1. COVAXIN is the vaccine - it does NOT contain Calf serum as you allege. 2. Calves are NOT slaughtered for it. 3. Calf serum is used ONLY for growing cells to make more of the virus. 4. This information is ALREADY in public domain since September 2020. WDTT https://t.co/2mI1viXR3n Those who keep talking about need for scientific temperament&research are now tweeting their disgust basis some RTI on Covaxin, adding to vaccine hesitancy by bringing religion based choices to it.Please resist sliding down this slippery slope against vaccines. Sharing an RTI document on his Twitter account, the Congress leader claimed that Covaxin contains the serum of a newborn calf. Congress's Gaurav Pandhi based his claims on an RTI response from the Central Drugs Controller General to Vikas Patni, the man who filed the query.