Covaxin Approval For Children May Now Be Faster: WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan

Even as Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin got emergency approval from the WHO, bringing relief to Indians on the eve of Diwali, the agency’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan has said that this will help speed up Covaxin Approval for children.

Speaking to NDTV, Swaminathan said, “In this case, it should be much faster. But again, it really depends on the data,” when she was asked about how long the approval of the vaccine for children might take.

However, she said that more data was needed to arrive at a conclusion on the vaccine’s impact on children.

The WHO approval has come as a relief as Indians who have taken the jab can travel without quarantine to several countries. This will also be especially helpful for students who are travelling abroad for studies.

While the WHO had come under criticism for reportedly taking a long time for approval, Swaminathan said that was not the case. She told NDTV that the approval took 50 to 60 days but some took up to 165 days. NDTV quoted her as saying, “Covaxin is somewhere in the middle, it took somewhere between 90 and 100 days.”

The Technical Advisory Group of WHO recommended the Emergency Use Listing status for Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin after a meeting on Wednesday. This was a much-awaited decision that will ease international travel and the export of the indigenous vaccine. The World Health Organisation’s panel had last week sought additional clarifications from the Hyderabad-based pharma firm. Covaxin is a whole virion-inactivated vaccine against SARS-CoV2, developed in partnership with ICMR and NIV, Pune.

“WHO has granted emergency use listing (EUL) to #COVAXIN® (developed by Bharat Biotech), adding to a growing portfolio of vaccines validated by WHO for the prevention of Covid-19,” the UN health body said in a tweet.

Bharat Biotech chairman and managing director Dr Krishna Ella calling it a ‘significant step’ said, “The EUL authorisation for Covaxin will enable us to contribute to accelerating the equitable access of Covid-19 vaccine, and the access to our vaccine globally thereby addressing the current public health emergency.”

Read all the Latest India News here