NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s drug regulator on Friday approved a coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University for emergency use, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters .
The decision cleans up the vaccine implantation in the second most populous country in the world, which, after the United States, has the highest number of COVID-19 infections.
India wants to start administering the vaccine soon, most likely on Wednesday, said one of the sources, who refused to be named before an official announcement was expected later.
A representative of the Standard Drug Control Organization (CDSCO) of India, whose experts are meeting for the second time this week, declined to comment.
Britain and Argentina have already authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for urgent public use.
The CDSCO is also considering applications for emergency use authorization for vaccines made by Pfizer Inc with Germany’s BioNTech and India’s Bharat Biotech.
Cheaper and easier to distribute than rival shots, the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine could change the game for global vaccination.
Countries with relatively basic health infrastructure have high hopes for a feature that, unlike Pfizer, can be stored and transported under normal refrigeration, rather than cooled to -70 degrees Celsius (-94 Fahrenheit).
India has reported more than 10 million cases of COVID-19, although its infection rate has dropped significantly from a mid-September peak. The country expects to inoculate 300 million of its 1.35 billion people in the first six to eight months of 2021.
DOSAGE THE DIET?
Britain became the first country to authorize the AstraZeneca vaccine this week, ahead of other Western countries, as it seeks to curb a historic rise in infections caused by a highly contagious form of the virus that has also appeared in India.
The AstraZeneca trait is being manufactured in India by the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest producer of vaccines, which has already stored about 50 million doses.
Although the Indian government has not yet signed a purchase agreement with SII, the company says it will focus first on the domestic market and then on exports, mainly to countries in South Asia and Africa.
Questions about the degree of effectiveness of the AstraZeneca firing have surrounded him since data released in November showed a divergence in success rates, which developers said reflected different dosing regimens.
The British drug regulator further clouded the picture this week when it said it had found an 80% success rate when full doses, three months apart, were administered above the average that the developers themselves had found.
Reports of Nigam Prusty, Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Krishna N. Das i; Editing by Neil Fullick and John Stonestreet