DCGI Permits Restricted Use Of Covaxin, Corbevax For 5-12 Year Olds
The drug controller also approved the use of two doses of Zydus Cadila's DNA vaccine for everybody above the age of 12
The Drugs Controller General of India has given permission under Restricted Use-Emergency Use to Covaxin, Corbevax, and Zycov-d for different age groups. Zycov-d is finally going to be rolled out for use after receiving approval.
Bharat Biotech's Covaxin has received approval for children older than 6 but younger than 12, Biological E's Corbevax has received approval for children between 5-12 and Zydus has received approval to give two doses of its DNA vaccine instead of the earlier mandated three shots to all those above 12 years of age.
This approval will now extend India's vaccination drive to children as young as five years of age. India extended its vaccination drive to children younger than 18 years of age from January 2022, a year after launching the COVID-19 vaccination drive.
All the three approved vaccines use different technologies to act against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While Bharat Biotech's Covaxin uses an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus. Zydus' vaccine is the first COVID vaccine using plasmid DNA to emulate the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and are also using needle-less technology for the same.
Corbevax manufactured by Biological E uses recombination proteins wherein they isolated the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and inserted it into yeast without the genome, thus allowing the spike protein to grow without carrying the genetic material of the virus.
Although the drug body has yet again approved the use of Covaxin, the WHO has still not renewed supplies of Covaxin as it found that there were some irregularities at the manufacturing plant in Hyderabad. They suspended the export of the vaccine to UN agencies.
India has so far totally administered over 188 croredoses of the various COVID-19 vaccines. According to the CoWin dashboard, about 3.18 crore children between the ages of 12-14, 9.99 crore children between the ages of 15-17 have been fully vaccinated. Over 2.58 crore people have taken the precautionary booster dose in the country.
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