WHO's approval for Covaxin likely this month

New Delhi: The World Health Organization’s approval for the indigenous COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin, developed by the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, is likely to come this month, official sources said Monday.

The WHO has so far approved Covid vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, US pharma majors Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, China’s Sinopharm and Oxford-AstraZeneca for emergency use.

Covaxin is one of the six vaccines that have received emergency use authorisation from India’s drug regulator and is being used in the nationwide inoculation programme, alongwith Covishield and Sputnik V.

The Centre had told Rajya Sabha in July that all documents required for the WHO’s Emergency Use Listing (EUL) have been submitted by Bharat Biotech as of July 9, and the global health body had commenced the review process.