Bengaluru: Zydus Cadila’s three-dose COVID-19 DNA vaccine was approved for emergency use in adults and children 12 years and above by the Ministry of Health, India, today, making it the sixth vaccine approved for use in India.
The company plans to manufacture 100 million to 120 million doses of ZyCoV-D annually and has already begun stockpiling the vaccine. Generic drugmaker Cadila Healthcare Ltd applied for approval of ZyCoV-D on July 1 based on an efficacy rate of 66.6 percent in a late-stage study of more than 28,000 volunteers nationwide.
ZyCoV-D is the world’s first plasmid DNA vaccine against Coronavirus. The immune system uses a section of genetic material from the virus which gives instructions in the form of DNA or RNA to make the particular protein it recognizes and responds to. Zydus Cadila’s vaccine, developed in partnership with the Department of Biotechnology, is the second home-grown vaccine to receive emergency approval in India after Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.
According to the drugmaker, its COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the new coronavirus mutants, especially the Delta variant, and is administered with a needle-free applicator rather than a syringe.
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