Moderna gets emergency use authorisation for its COVID-19 vaccine: VK Paul

Moderna Inc has got emergency use approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for its COVID-19 vaccine, Niti Aayog's VK Paul said on Tuesday.

With this, Moderna's vaccine has become the fourth COVID-19 vaccine to get approval in India.

Adressing Union Health Ministry's briefing on COVID-19, Paul said the government will soon also close vaccine deal with Pfizer for its COVID-19 vaccine, co-developed with BioNTech.

Earlier, DCGI had given approval to drug maker Cipla to import Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine.

On June 27, Moderna informed DCGI that the US government has agreed to donate a certain number of doses of its COVID-19 vaccine through COVAX to India for use here and sought an approval from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) for the vaccines.
 
Till now, Serum Institute of India's Covishield, Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and Russia's Sputnik V were the three COVID-19 vaccines which had been approved in India.

The central government in April had issued detailed guidelines and proactively eased entry of foreign made COVID-19 vaccines approved by US FDA, EMA, UK's MHRA and Japan's PMDA, and WHO's Emergency Use Listing into India.

The central government in April issued detailed guidelines and proactively eased entry of foreign made COVID-19 vaccines approved by US FDA, EMA, UK's MHRA and Japan's PMDA, and WHO's Emergency Use Listing into India.

On June 1, in a bid to expedite the rollout of vaccines, the DCGI decided to waive testing of batches at CDL for foreign-manufactured vaccines that have been approved by international drug regulators such as the US FDA, the UK's MHRA or the WHO.