Five more Covid vaccines in pipeline

The Centre is gearing to scale up the Covid-19 vaccine production as more and more States flag shortage of vaccine doses. It is expected that by the end of the third quarter of 2021, India will get five additional vaccine manufacturers apart from current manufactures Covishield and Covaxin.

Around 20 Covid-19 vaccines are in various clinical and pre-clinical stages and will add a boost to India's vaccine production. As per top government sources, the new strategy is to manufacture additional vaccine doses.

"These vaccines are Sputnik V vaccine (in collaboration with Dr Reddy's), Johnson & Johnson vaccine (in collaboration with Biological E), Novavax vaccine (in collaboration with Serum India), Zydus Cadila's vaccine, and Bharat Biotech's intranasal vaccine," a source was quoted as saying. Sputnik V vaccine is expected to get the Emergency Use Approval (EUA) within the next ten days.