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New Delhi: The covid-19 working group of the National Technical Advisory Group On Immunization (NTAGI) has recommended inclusion of Serum Institute of India’s Covovax vaccine in the national covid-19 vaccination programme for 12-17 years age group, an official who is aware of the development confirmed on Sunday.
Last month, the apex drug controller of India had approved Covovax for restricted emergency use among children above 12 years of age under certain conditions. Subsequently, the Serum Institute of India started to pursue regulatory permissions and its protocol.
"The matter was discussed during a meeting of Covid-19 working group of NTAGI last Friday and data pertaining to the Covovax was reviewed. After detailed deliberations, the experts recommended Covovax for the inclusion in national vaccination programe to vaccinate children above 12 years of age," said the person cited above.
Serum Institute of India refused to comment on this development, while an email sent to Health Ministry’s spokesperson was not answered till the time of publication.
SII is developing Covovax through a technology transfer protocol from Novavax, which already has approval from the European medicines agency for conditional marketing authorisation.
It is to be noted that last month the Union Health Ministry permitted the vaccination of children above 12 years of age. Children are being vaccinated with the Biological E's Corbevax. Since then, over 18.5 million vaccine doses have been administered for age group 12-14 years.
Under the vaccination drive, more than 1846.6 million individuals have been vaccinated so far across the country out of which 2,34,18,617 have received their precaution or booster dose.
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