The Central government has fast-tracked emergency approvals for foreign-produced COVID-19 vaccines that have been granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in other countries to expand the basket of vaccines for domestic use and hasten the pace and coverage of vaccination, the Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
"India constituted a task force headed by Principal Scientific Advisor to encourage R&D for vaccine manufacture and constituted in August 2020 an Expert Group headed by Member, NITI to assist in the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccination programme," the Ministry said.
It further said that India became the first country to have two "Made in India" Covid vaccines for domestic vaccination drive because of these strategies.
The matter of augmenting the basket of vaccines available for fighting the pandemic as well as accelerating the pace and coverage of domestic vaccination programme was discussed in the 23rd meeting of the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC) held on April 11, 2021, chaired by Dr V K Paul, Member (Health), Niti Aayog.
