The World Health Organization said Wednesday it had issued an emergency use listing for Covaxin, a vaccine against Covid-19 produced by India's Bharat Biotech.
Found to have 78 percent efficacy after two doses spread over four weeks, the vaccine "is extremely suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements," the UN body said in a statement. Covaxin is the first vaccine completely developed and manufactured in India to receive WHO approval.
Based on inactivated coronavirus antigens, it becomes the eighth vaccine against Covid-19 on the WHO's list, including others from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm, and Sinovac.
WHO emergency approval, which includes an assessment of clinical trial data, can speed up international recognition of vaccines. It also allows their use by fellow UN agencies and the global Covax initiative, set up to immunize people in the world's least-well-off countries.
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