Children above the age of 12 with comorbidities will be prioritised for vaccination, the government advisory committee National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NTAGI). Some supply of Zydus Cadila’s Zycov-D vaccine, which received emergency use authorisation last week, will be set aside for comorbid adolescents, said NTAGI chief NK Arora. However, vaccinating adults remains a priority, he said.
The NTAGI further said the process for approval of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin for children will begin by September-end or October, CNBC-TV18 reported. “We are projecting up to 10 cr Covaxin doses per month from September,” Arora said.
The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) had on Friday approved Zydus Cadila’s three-dose COVID-19 DNA vaccine for emergency use in adults and children aged 12 years and above, bringing in the sixth vaccine authorised for use in the country.
The company said it plans to manufacture 100 million to 120 million doses of ZyCoV-D annually and has started to stockpile the vaccine.
The Ahmedabad-based generic drugmaker, listed as Cadila Healthcare Ltd, applied for the authorisation of ZyCoV-D on July 1, based on an efficacy rate of 66.6 per cent in a late-stage trial of over 28,000 volunteers nationwide.
ZyCoV-D is the world’s first plasmid DNA vaccine against the coronavirus. It uses a section of genetic material from the virus that gives instructions as either DNA or RNA to make the specific protein that the immune system recognises and responds to.
The DCGI will give approvals in a phased manner first starting with children aged 12 years and above in the first phase. The approvals will be given for release of vaccines for 6 to 12 years of children and later for children aged between 2 to 6 years.
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