India to Approve Oxford-Astrazeneca Vaccine in a Few Days

The chances of India approving the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use in a few days are quite high. According to the government sources, the updated data submitted by Serum Institute of India (SII) is satisfactory. As soon as the evaluation of the data is complete, the regulator will apply for the Covid-19 vaccine’s approval from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

As per a senior official, India can take its regulatory decisions on an independent basis. The rolling out reviews are going on while the company has provided the same data from clinical trials in the UK and Brazil. It is also expected that on the basis of regulatory assessment, the vaccine will get approval in a day or two.

The possibilities of the UK granting approval for emergency use authorization as MHRA reviews the data for Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are also high. It is to be noted that the Indian version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, namely Covishield will be developed by Serum Institute.

According to a PTI report, AstraZeneca’s CEO, Pascal Soriot has reported Covishield to have achieved the “winning formula” which will make it highly efficient. Moreover, the trials are expected to show that AstraZeneca has attained a Covid-19 vaccine as efficient as Pfizer-BioNTech (at 95%) and Moderna (at 94.5%). Pascal Soriot also expects the vaccine to be highly effective against the new variants of the coronavirus disease.

Indian officials believe the coming few weeks will bring along three vaccines with emergency use authorization, contributing to the large scale Covid-19 vaccine roll out. The three vaccines are Covishield, Pfizer-BioNTech’s BNT162b2, and Covaxin, being locally developed by Bharat Biotech.