Serum vaccine might get WHO’s approval to expand its circulation worldwide.

Covishield of the Serum Institute of India (SII), Pune, may soon be allowed to use internationally by the World Health Organization (WHO). Covishield was approved by the drug regulator in India for emergency use on 3 January. For the vaccination that started in India on January 16, the government has signed 1.1 crore doses of KoviShield from SII. Covishield is co-created by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.

World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adnom Ghebreyes said in a press conference on Monday that we are hoping that SII will make full data sets available for rapid assessment soon. Based on this, the WHO will decide whether AstraZeneca’s vaccine can be allowed to be used internationally.

UK has already approved Serun Institute Covid vaccine:

The vaccine was first approved by the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on December 29 for emergency use. After this, India, Brazil, Argentina, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, and Morocco have also approved this vaccine. In the coming weeks, there will be an attempt to get approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for CoveShield. AstraZeneca has also stepped up efforts to list emergency use from the WHO.

What is WHO’s emergency use listing:

The WHO listed the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine for emergency use on 31 December.

This made Pfizer-BioNtech’s vaccine the first vaccine to be approved by the Global Health Agency for emergency use.

The WHO’s Emergency Use Listing (EUL) speeds up the regulatory approval process and countries can move forward in the process of import and vaccination.

With this, UNICEF and Pan-American Health Organization can also start buying vaccines for needy countries.