India on Sunday formally approved the emergency use of two Covid-19 vaccines to kick off one of the world’s biggest inoculation drives, while the European Union offered to help drug companies expand production to ease distribution bottlenecks.
India, the second-worst affected country, has authorized use of COVID vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University and by local pharmaceutical firm Bharat Biotech, the country’s drug regulator said.
The Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest manufacturer of vaccines, has said it is making between 50 and 60 million doses a month of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, which is cheaper than the Pfizer-BioNTech jab and easier to store and transport.
The Drugs Controller General of India said both manufacturers had submitted data showing their vaccines were safe to use.
India has set an ambitious target of inoculating 300 million of its 1.3 billion people by mid-2021.
Within minutes of the approval, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that it would make every Indian proud that the two vaccines that have been approved by the country’s drug controller are made in India. “This shows the eagerness of our scientific community to fulfill the dream of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat, at the root of which is care and compassion,” he added.
He also congratulated Indian scientists, calling emergency approval “a decisive turning point to strengthen a spirited fight” against the coronavirus pandemic.
This permission is for restricted use in an emergency situation in the public interest as an abundant caution, in clinical trial mode,” the permission document granted by Indian drug regulator DCGI to Bharat Biotech for its COVID-19 reads.
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