Hyderabad
In a major bid to India's journey in vaccination against COVID-19, Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech's Covaxin gets approval from WHO's technical advisory team. Bharat Biotech has been pushing for approval for the past few months. Covaxin has demonstrated 77.8 percent effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 and 65.2 percent protection against the new Delta variant.
But then, the emergency listing got delayed last month as the technical advisory group sought some additional clarification from Bharat Biotech for its final risk assessment. On Wednesday, the technical advisory group and has recommended for emergency use listing.
WHO has so far approved Covid-19 vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-SK Bio/Serum Institute of India, Johnson 7 Johnson - Janssen, Moderna, and Sinopharm for emergency use. The technical advisory group is an independent advisory body that provides recommendations to WHO for approval of vaccines.