A key meeting of the drug regulator's expert panel is currently underway to take a call on the emergency use approval sought by Serum Institute of India, Bharat Biotech and Pfizer for their Coronavirus vaccines.
Serum, which is producing 'Covishield' vaccine developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca, and Bharat Biotech, which had collaborated with ICMR to make 'Covaxin', presented their data before the Subject Expert Committee of the Central Drug Standard Control Organization on December 30. America's Pfizer had sought more time to present their data.
Following the meeting on Wednesday, the expert panel had said that they are analysing the additional data and information submitted by Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech, while the next meeting was fixed on January 1.
The applications will move to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for final approval, once the vaccine gets cleared by the expert panel.
The government plans to start administering the vaccine shots starting this month.
Today's meeting comes a day before a dry run for Covid-19 vaccinations to begin across the country. At an event on Thursday, Drugs Controller General Dr VG Somani said, "Probably we will have a happy New Year with something in hand. That is what I can hint at".
Pfizer was the first one to apply for quick approval on December 4, followed by Serum and Bharat Biotech who applied on December 6 and 7, respectively.
The objective of the dry run for vaccine introduction is to assess operational feasibility in the use of Co-WIN application in a field environment, to test the linkages between planning and implementation and to identify the challenges and guideway forward before actual implementation.
The central government plans to vaccinate nearly 30 crore people in the first phase of drive. It will be offered to one crore healthcare workers, along with 2 crore frontline and essential workers and 27 crores elderly, mostly above the age of 50 years with co-morbidities.
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Earlier in this week, the UK approved the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine, the second vaccine to be cleared for rollout in Britain after the Pfizer-BioNTech.
Oxford-AstraZeneca has already produced around 50 million shots and plans to increase it up to 100 million by March next year, Mr Poonawalla had said on Monday.
All these vaccines have shown to be more than 90% effective in treating the virus.