India has been witnessing downward trend in covid-19 daily cases even as the overall tally surpassed 97 lakh on Tuesday. Since early November, the country has managed to keep daily cases below 50,000.
Now, India’s hope are rising even higher with three pharmaceutical companies seeking emergency use authorization of their covid-19 vaccine candidate in the country.
Pfizer, based in US, became the first company on Sunday to seek emergency approval of its covid-19 vaccine. It was followed by Serum Institute of India, world’s largest vaccine producer by volume, as they applied for emergency use on Monday. Now, in the latest, Bharat Biotech, India’s indigenous vaccine candidate, has also applied to DCGI seeking emergency approval for covaxin.
Notable, Pfizer and SII, who is manufacturing Oxford’s covid-19 vaccine, have released their vaccines efficacy rate, on the other hand, Covaxin has sought the permission on the basis of its phase 1 and2 trial.
Covaxin is still undergoing phase 3 trials of covid-19 vaccine among 25,000 volunteers across 25 Centres in the country.
These applications by pharma majors for emergency approval will be reviewed by an expert panel tomorrow. In an interaction with PTI, the officials said that the expert panel of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) will share its observations with the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) and the final decision will be made after determining efficacy and safety of these vaccine candidates.
Notably, Pfizer has already received emergency use authorisation in United Kingdom where the roll out process began from today. The vaccine developed jointly by Pfizer and German biotechnology partner BioNTech has reported an efficacy of over 95 per cent, the highest by any candidate as on date, in the late stage trials.
Meanwhile, Serum Institute CEO on Monday tweeted, “As promised, before the end of 2020, @SerumInstIndia has applied for emergency use authorisation for the first made-in-India vaccine, COVISHIELD. This will save countless lives, and I thank the Government of India and Sri @narendramodi ji for their invaluable support.”
