In what will come as a great relief to a majority of parents, India’s drug regulator, Drug Controller General of India has, on Friday approved the use of Zydus Cadila’s Covid-19 vaccine, ZyCov-D for emergency use in adults and children aged over 12 years.

As several state governments announced the commencement of in-person classes in schools starting this month, parents have been in for an anxious wait, hoping to have at least a single dose of the vaccine prior to sending their children to campus.

The three-dose vaccine is the world’s first DNA Plasma Covid-19 vaccine and is the second vaccine indigenous vaccine after Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.

The vaccine manufacturer, Ahmedabad-based Cadila Healthcare Limited (Zydus Cadila) had previously said that the vaccine would be available for use two months after receiving approvals. According to sources in the company, they propose to manufacture 100 million to 120 million doses of ZyCoV-D per year.

Zydus Cadila had applied for the approval of the vaccine on July 1. Data submitted to the authorities indicate that the efficacy rate of the vaccine is at 66.6 % in a late-stage trial in over 28,000 volunteers nation-wide.

ZyCoV-D has been developed in partnership with the Department of Biotechnology and the makers have claimed that it is effective against the new Delta variant of the Coronavirus. The shot will be administered using a needle-free applicator.

Sources: NDTV, Network 18 

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