Four days ago, while speaking at the G20 summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi nudged the World Health Organisation (WHO) over the approval of the Indian vaccine ‘Covaxin’. If WHO approves Covaxin, India will go a long way in eliminating global disparities in vaccine supply. The Prime Minister said that by the end of 2022, India could supply 5 billion vaccines to developing and poor countries.
New Delhi – Covaxin, the covid vaccine developed by the Indian company Bharat Biotech, has been cleared for emergency use by the WHO. Therefore, the vaccine now has global approval. This will greatly benefit the company and India. The Covaxin approval was pending with the WHO for the last few months. However, at the recent G20 summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had underlined that India could supply 5 billion vaccines to developing countries if the WHO approves India’s Covaxin. Approval by the WHO within four days of this is noteworthy.
Vaccination has been carried out in India since January with two vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin. Covaxin is the first vaccine developed entirely in India. Everyone was waiting for the WHO to approve the vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad. This is because those who have been vaccinated with Covaxin were facing difficulties in travelling abroad. Many countries have not yet approved Covaxin because it is not WHO approved. These countries also refrained from importing Covaxin for the same reason. Only a few countries have successfully developed a vaccine against Coronavirus. Therefore, other countries depend on the supply of vaccines from these countries. Most vaccine manufacturing countries have adopted the policy to export the vaccines only after fulfilling the domestic requirements in the wake of the fresh waves of the pandemic. This has created an imbalance in vaccine supply around the world.
Indian vaccines are cheap and India is the centre of vaccine production in the world. India has the capacity and experience to produce vaccines on a large scale. In this scenario, if the WHO approves the Indian vaccine, India can manufacture the vaccine on a massive scale and supply it to other countries. This increases the importance of the approval granted by the WHO to Covaxin.
Bharat Biotech had submitted the necessary reports of the second and third phase trials of Covaxin for approval three months ago. The third phase trial of Covaxin was completed in June. The WHO approval for the vaccine has been awaited since then. The approval was expected by the end of September. But there was a delay. Two weeks ago, the WHO convened a meeting of its expert committee. It was reported that the decision would be taken during this meeting. But no decision was made. Experts from the WHO’s Technical Advisory Group for vaccines examined and evaluated all the trial reports of Covaxin and recommended that the vaccine be approved. TAG-EUL, an independent advisory group, made a similar recommendation. On this basis, the decision has now been taken by the WHO.
The WHO, while approving Covaxin, said the vaccine was safe to give to people over the age of 18 and did not have many side effects. Union Health Minister, Mansukh Mandaviya, welcomed the WHO decision. Some countries had approved Covaxin even before the WHO approval. Recently Australia approved Covaxin. Before that, Nepal, Mexico, Iran, Oman, Mauritius and the Philippines had agreed on Covaxin. Therefore, the Covaxin vaccination certificate was valid for travel to these countries. Following the WHO approval, other countries are also expected to approve the vaccine soon.
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