Covaxin 'data looks good', WHO approval likely by month end

The World Health Organization’s approval for India's Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin is likely to come by this month end.

Dr VK Paul, member of Niti Aayog and head of the Covid-19 task force, in an interview with India Today on Monday said that Covaxin's data looked promising and that it could soon get WHO approval.

Covaxin, developed by the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, 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, along with Covishield and Sputnik V.

Sources within Bharat Biotech have also said that they expect the approval to come by "month-end" and that "all queries have been answered", India Today reported.

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.