WHO Authorizes Emergency Use of Indian Covaxin COVID-19 Vaccine

The World Health Organization (WHO) authorized the emergency use of the Covaxin vaccine against COVID-19 developed in India, which supports a drug that the country’s regulators authorized long before completing advanced safety and efficiency tests .

The health agency of the HIM-HER-IT It said in a statement that it authorized the use of Covaxin, developed by the Indian laboratory Bharat Biotech. That makes Covaxin the eighth COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by the WHO.

“The announcement of this emergency use expands the availability of vaccines, the most effective medical tools to end the pandemic“Said the doctor Mariangela Simão, assistant to the general director of the WHO for access to medicines and health products.

Covaxin was developed by Bharat Biotech in partnership with him Indian Medical Research Council, the government investigative body. The vaccine is made from a killed coronavirus to elicit an immune response and is given in two doses.

The WHO said it found approximately 78% effective in preventing severe COVID-19 and was “extremely useful”For poor countries because of their simpler storage conditions.

A group of experts convened by the WHO indicated that there was insufficient data on the safety and efficiency of the vaccine in pregnant women. Studies are planned to address these issues.

India’s drug regulator approved in January the use of Covaxin, months before extensive human trials were completed, raising concerns from health experts that the vaccine was approved prematurely.

Bharat Biotech published results in July showing that the vaccine was 93% effective in preventing severe cases of COVID-19 and approximately 65% ​​with the most contagious delta variant.

In March, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the first of two doses of the vaccine. By mid-October, more than 110 million doses had been administered, making Covaxin the second vaccine against the COVID-19 most used in India after AstraZeneca.