As J&J’s Single-Dose COVID Jab Gets Emergency Use Approval In India, Know About Other Vaccines Being Administered

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya announced this major development, which will provide a significant push to India’s Covid vaccination drive.

Representative Photo

New Delhi: With the Covid-19 vaccination drive underway in full swing in the country, Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose vaccine has in a significant move been given approval for Emergency Use in India.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya announced this major development, which will provide a significant push to India’s Covid vaccination drive.

“India expands its vaccine basket! Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine is given approval for Emergency Use in India. Now India has 5 EUA vaccines. This will further boost our nation's collective fight against,” he tweeted.

Johnson & Johnson had earlier on Friday applied for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine to the Government of India.

The vaccine maker had last month said its single-shot Covid-19 vaccine has shown promising signs of protection against the Delta variant rapidly spreading across the US and other countries.

The other vaccines being used in the nationwide inoculation drive are:

• Bharat Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin
• Serum Institute of India’s Covishield
• Sputnik V
• Moderna

While Covaxin and Covishield were given emergency use authorisation together to kickstart India's COVID vaccination drive, Sputnik V and Moderna received the EUA later.

The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is an mRNA vaccine that requires 2 shots, 28 days apart, produced by Moderna Inc - an American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sputnik V is also a two-dose COVID vaccine that was produced by Russia's Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. 

Meanwhile, India’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage has achieved a significant milestone of 50 crores.

Cumulatively, 50,10,09,609 vaccine doses have been administered through 58,08,344 sessions, as per the provisional report till 7 a.m. on Saturday.

49,55,138 vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hours.