Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine becomes first to get approval in India

The long suspense over COVID-19 vaccine in India comes to an end. India’s drug regulator approves coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford Univeristy for emergency use on Friday. Nearly 30 crore people will be vaccinated in the first phase.

The Indian government is planning to start giving vaccine shots from January, once the vaccine is cleared for a final time by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). Pan India vaccine dry-run will start tomorrow.

The decision would pave the way for the vaccine’s roll out in the world’s second-most populous country which also has the highest number of COVID-19 infections in the world.

Covishield is developed by the University of Oxford and drug manufacturer AstraZeneca. Serum Institute of India is manufacturing Covishield in India. The Oxford- Astra Zeneca team used a modified version of a chimpanzee adenovirus, known as ChAdOx1.

More than 50 million doses of Covishield have already been stockpiled by SII.

Argentina and United Kingdom have already given emergency use approval to Covishield and started the vaccine rollout process.

Six vaccines are at various stages of clinical trials, of which four are being indigenously developed. The clinical trials by Bharat Biotech of its vaccine ‘Covaxin’ are in phase 3, while the one which is being developed by Zydus Cadila is in phase 2 clinical trial.

Apart from this, the Serum Institute of India is also conducting phase 2 and 3 clinical trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Similarly, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories is conducting phase 2 and 3 clinical trials for Russian vaccine Sputnik V.