Covid vaccine availability to improve across country in coming months

Drug regulatory authorities keen on fast-tracking approvals of new Covid vaccine candidates

Hyderabad: The availability of Covid-19 vaccines in coming months is expected to improve not only in Telangana but across the country with drug regulatory authorities keen on fast-tracking approvals of new Covid vaccine candidates. In the next three to four months, if permissions are accorded smoothly, then people will have access to anywhere between six to nine different Covid vaccines.

At present, there are four Covid vaccines in the country that have received emergency use authorisation from regulatory authorities and they include Covishield, Covaxin, Sputnik-V and the recent Moderna’s Covid vaccine. In the coming days, the Centre is also expected to give a green signal for Pfizer’s vaccine, which would increase the pool of available vaccines to five. Then there is single-dose Covid vaccine developed by Johnson and Johnson, which according to reports is exploring all possibilities to accelerate the availability of the drug in the country.

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Apart from these six Covid vaccines, there are at least five more vaccine candidates which are under various stages of development. The DNA-based Covid vaccine ZyCov-D, being developed by Zydus Cadilla, the Ahmedabad-based vaccine company has completed its phase three clinical trials covering 28,000 participants from across the country. Zydus Cadilla is expected to apply for emergency approval for its ZyCov-D vaccine in the coming days. According to reports, the company is also conducting clinical trials of its Covid vaccine on about 1,000 children the preliminary data is reportedly very encouraging.

Hyderabad-based pharma company Biological E Limited has already inked a deal with the Centre to provide 30 crore doses of its promising Covid-19 vaccine Corbevax, which is currently undergoing phase-III clinical trials. The phase-I and phase-II clinical trials of Corbevax have shown encouraging results and when the vaccine hits the market, experts are expecting it to be the cheapest indigenously developed vaccine in the country.

In the month of April, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) had approved funding for conducting clinical studies of country’s first mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine HCO-19, which is being developed by Pune-based biotech company Gennova Biopharmaceuticals. Apart from Covid vaccines that are based on jabs, recently, Bharat Biotech has submitted phase-I data of its intranasal vaccine candidate BBV 154 to Indian drug regulators. The nasal vaccine of Bharat Biotech is being developed in collaboration with University of Washington.

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