An altmetric analysis of online news on India's first indigenous COVID-19 vaccine

BACKGROUND: Covaxin is the first indigenous vaccine developed in India against COVID-19. The purpose of this study was to analyze the news stories on Covaxin published in the online media between two statements issued by Indian Council for Medical Research on 2(nd) and 4(th) July for their content, quality of information, and reporting standards. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A systematic search was performed on Google to identify the news stories related to Covaxin in the English language published between these two statements. The selected news stories were subjected to content analysis and reviewed using the screening points developed through a consultation by two independent experts using ten prevalidated criteria for health news review. The data were analyzed in MS Excel and StataMP14. RESULTS: The final analysis included 24 news stories. The mean and median score of the news stories is 10.71 and 12 (out of 20), respectively, with a score ranging from 2 to 17. The stories did not promote disease or vaccine mongering (100%), adequately mentioned the true novelty of the vaccine (95.8%), and source of the information (83.3%). However, they mostly failed to mention the information on costs, research data related to benefits, and harms and quality of the available evidence. CONCLUSION: There is a lack of reporting of detailed analysis about the methodology of development of the vaccine and limitations in its research design by health journalists. It is important to train journalists on proper reporting of health news to improve its quality in Indian media.