Serum Institute's application for emergency use approval of Covid vaccine to be considered today
Serum Institute of India's application for emergency use authorisation will be considered by the expert panel today. This development comes hours after the UK government accepted the recommendation from the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to authorise Oxford University-AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine, named Covishield, for emergency use. Serum Institute is conducting the trials for Covishield in India and is the manufacturer for the same.
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While Bharat Biotech and Pfizer had also applied for emergency use authorisation, Oxford-AstraZeneca's candidate has been touted to be the first one to get the nod.
Once the vaccine is approved, Serum will have to get the World Health Organisation's (WHO) pre-qualification to export the vaccine to other countries which might take a month. This would eventually be beneficial for India as the country would get the first batch of about 40-50 million doses of the vaccine that's been developed at the Pune plant.
