The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare announced today that Zydus Cadila’s COVID19 vaccine ‘ZyCoV-D’  will soon be introduced in India’s inoculation drive.

“Zydus Cadila vaccine has been given emergency use approval. In the short term it won’t come to the market. But it would come into the COVID vaccination programme. We are in conversation with the manufacturers about the pricing of the vaccine,” Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said during the media briefing on September 30.

“Since it is a third-dose vaccine, it would have differential pricing than the currently used vaccines,” the bureaucrat added.

The announcement came a month after ZyCoV-D was granted emergency use authorisation by the Drugs Controller General of India.

The vaccine which is based on a deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) transfer technology which is globally the first of its type. 

Earlier, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya had hinted on July 27 that children may start receiving their doses against the virus from September.

The Ahmedabad-based pharma company Zydus Cadila claims that its vaccine is 66.6 per cent effective against symptomatic COVID19 infection and 100 per cent effective for moderate COVID19. It also reported that the vaccine is safe for children between 12 and 18 years of age.

Meanwhile, it was also highlighted that 64.1 per cent of doses have been administered in COVID19 vaccination centres in rural areas.