Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 7: The government has on Saturday granted Johnson & Johnson’s single dose Corona vaccine the Emergency Use Authorisation, making it the fourth vaccine to be approved in the country.
So far, India has been administering Serum Institute of India’s Covishield, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and the Russian Sputnik V vaccines. The Moderna vaccine had earlier received EUA, but will not be available in India till next year.
“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,” Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted.
A recent trial conducted in South Africa found that the J&J vaccine offered protection against severe disease and death. The single dose shot offered 91 per cent to 96.2 per cent protection against death, while offering 67 per cent protection against hospitalisation when the Beta coronavirus variant dominates and about 71 per cent protection against hospitalisation when the Delta variant dominates, the media reports said.
Global healthcare company Johnson & Johnson had applied for EUA of its vaccine in India earlier this week. In a statement released on Friday, the firm noted that this move was an important milestone that paved the way to bringing the single-dose COVID-19 vaccine to the people of India, and the rest of the world through a collaboration with Biological E. Limited.
It added that Biological E will be an important part of its global supply chain network, helping in the supply of the vaccine through extensive collaborations and partnerships with governments, health authorities and organisations such as Gavi and the COVAX Facility.
“Our single-shot vaccine was 85 percent effective in preventing severe disease across all regions studied, and showed protection against COVID-19-related hospitalisation and death, beginning 28 days after vaccination,” the statement said.
The country has administered over 50 crore vaccine dosages so far, the union health ministry said. The ministry said 22,93,781 beneficiaries in the age group of 18-44 years were administered the first dose, while 4,32,281 received the second dose of the vaccine on Friday. Cumulatively, 17,23,20,394 people in the said age group have received the first dose and 1,12,56,317 have received the second dose of the vaccine across all states and Union territories since the start of the third phase of the vaccination drive.