The ministry of health and family welfare, on Tuesday, revealed that as many as nine Covid-19 vaccine candidates, that are currently under clinical trials, will be ready for authorisation in the near future.
The ministry of health and family welfare in a press briefing informed that the vaccines include Astrazeneca and Oxford university developed and Serum Institute of India manufactured Covishield, Covaxin by Bharat Biotech Limited, ZyCoV-D by Zydus Cadila, Russian vaccine candidate Sputnik-V, NVX-CoV2373 by SII, HGCO19 by Geneva, and two other vaccines that are the Recombinant Protein Antigen based vaccine by Biological E Limited and Inactivated rabies vector platform by Bharat Biotech.
All these vaccines are currently undergoing different phases of clinical trials - the former five vaccine candidates are either in phase II or phase III, the latter three are in pre-clinical trial phases.
Two vaccine candidates Covishield and Covaxin that are undergoing third phase trials have applied for emergency use authorisation to the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). Their application's review is expected to happen on Wednesday by the subject expert committee (SEC) for the vaccines.
However, Pfizer India became the first pharmaceutical to approach DCGI for emergency use authorisation, soon after it had received necessary permission in the UK and Bahrain.
Pfizer India submitted its application on December 4 and then the Serum institute also filed for the EUA while Bharat Biotech applied for the same on Monday.
On Tuesday, the UK became the first western country to begin the inoculation drive of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine. Meanwhile, there are concerns in India as Pfizer's vaccine would require -70 degrees celsius temperature for storage.
Experts have raised doubts that the extremely low temperature needed for storing the vaccine is a major challenge for delivery in a country like India, especially in its smaller towns and rural areas where maintaining such cold chain facilities can be very difficult.
Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan revealed that some vaccine candidates may receive a license for authorisation in the next few weeks.
"The complete immunization in all the eight candidates would require 2-3 doses of it inoculated at the gap of 3 to 4 weeks," he added.
However, the need for following precautions has been stressed once again as experts continue to maintain that measures adopted will have to be followed even after there is a vaccine available.