, offering reassurance for a shot the country’s regulators allowed long before advanced safety and efficacy testing was completed.
WHO said the vaccine was found to be about 78 percent effective in preventing severe Covid-19 and was “extremely suitable” for poor countries due to its much easier storage requirements. Despite India’s repeated endorsement of its homegrown vaccine, Bharat Biotech has faced problems scaling up production. In July, India’s Health Ministry said the company was making 25 million doses of the vaccine on average each month and expected to increase monthly production to 58 million doses.
To date, the World Health Organization has granted emergency approval to the vaccines made by AstraZeneca and its partner, the Serum Institute of India, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and the Chinese pharmaceuticals Sinopharm and Sinovac.