Kinkini Gupta
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Written By: Kinkini Gupta | Updated : January 13, 2023 2:51 PM IST
DCGI Approves Covovax Heterologous Booster Dose For Adults
In view of the recently uptick of cases pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Serum Institute of India recently wrote to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), asking for approval of Covovax heterologous booster dose for those aged 18 years and above. The Covovax vaccine has been approved as the booster dose for adults. As per reports the vaccine was approved by an expert panel of the central drug regulatory authority. They have recommended market authorization for Serum Institute of India to manufacture this vaccine for adults.
This vaccine booster dose is to be administered to adults who have already taken the first two doses of either Covishield or Covaxin. This was declared by the subject expert committee (SEC) of the CDSCO.
The first authorization of the use of Covovax was given by DCGI for two age groups, first for teenagers between age 12 and 17 and for children between ag 7 and 11. This was in March 2022 and June 2022 respectively. The approval for its use was given under specific conditions. The manufacturing of Covovax is done through technology transfer from Novovax. Novovax is the vaccine approved by the European Medicines Agency for conditional marketing authorization. The World Health Organization (WHO) had also granted its use as an emergency on December 17, 2021. In August 2020, US-based vaccine maker Novavax Inc. announced a license agreement with SII for the development and commercialization of NVX-CoV2373, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in India and low-and-middle-income countries.
Covovax vaccine was first given approval for administering doses to kids between the age of 7 and 11 years. Now, adults can avail it as well. After an individual takes the vaccine, the body will recognize the copies of the spike proteins as foreign substances and that is why it will build its immunity against them. In case the real virus enter the body and tries to infect the cell, our body will be able to fight it off.
