WHO approve Serum Institute COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday (local time) gave emergency use approval (EUA) to two versions of Astrazeneca-Oxford- developed COVID-19 vaccines, allowing these shots to be rolled out globally through COVAX.

The vaccines are being produced by AstraZeneca- SKBIO (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India. WHO’s EUL assesses the quality, safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. It also allows countries to expedite their own regulatory approval to import and administer COVID-19 vaccines.

“Countries with no access to vaccines to date will finally be able to start vaccinating their health workers and populations at risk, contributing to the COVAX Facility’s goal of equitable vaccine distribution,” said Dr Mariângela Simão, WHO Assistant-Director General for Access to Medicines and Health Products.

‘But we must keep up the pressure to meet the needs of priority populations everywhere and facilitate global access. To do that, we need two things – a scale- up of manufacturing capacity, and developers’ early submission of their vaccines for WHO review.”