Covid-19: India eyes 4 vaccines in immunisation drive

A government minister said earlier the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine had been given the green light on Friday.

Experts at India’s drugs regulators have recommended for emergency use two coronavirus vaccines, one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University and the other backed by a state-run institute, the government said on Saturday.

A government minister said earlier the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine had been given the green light on Friday, paving the way for a huge immunisation campaign in the world’s second most populous country.

The other vaccine, known as COVAXIN, has been developed locally by Bharat Biotech and the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters earlier that two other vaccines were waiting to be approved - Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D and Russia’s Sputnik V that are both on trial in India.

“India is perhaps the only country where four vaccines are getting ready,” he said.

India has reported more than 10.3 million COVID-19 cases and around 150,000 deaths, though its rate of infection has come down significantly from a mid-September peak.

The country hopes to inoculate 300 million of its 1.35 billion people in the first six to eight months of this year.

• India