NEW DELHI: India’s drug regulator on Friday approved a coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University for emergency use, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The decision clears the vaccine’s rollout in the world’s second-most populous country which, after the United States, has the highest number of COVID-19 infections.
India wants to start administering the vaccine soon, most likely by Wednesday, said one of the sources, both of whom declined to be named ahead of an official announcement expected later in the day.
A representative of India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), whose experts are meeting for the second time this week, declined to comment.
Britain and Argentina have already authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for urgent public use.
The CDSCO is also considering emergency-use authorization applications for vaccines made by Pfizer Inc. with Germany’s BioNTech, and by India’s Bharat Biotech.
Cheaper and easier to distribute than rival shots, the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine could be a game-changer for global immunization.
Countries with relatively basic health infrastructure have high hopes for a shot that, unlike Pfizer’s, can be stored and transported under normal refrigeration, rather than supercooled to -70 degrees Celsius (-94 Fahrenheit).
India has reported more than 10 million COVID-19 cases, though its rate of infection has come down significantly from a mid-September peak. The country hopes to inoculate 300 million of its 1.35 billion people in the first six to eight months of 2021.
Britain became the first country this week to authorize the AstraZeneca vaccine, moving ahead of other western countries as it seeks to stem a record surge of infections driven by a highly contagious form of the virus that has also surfaced in India.
The AstraZeneca shot is being manufactured in India by Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest producer of vaccines, which has already stockpiled about 50 million doses.
Though the Indian government has not yet signed a purchase agreement with SII, the company says it will focus on the home market first, and then exports — mainly to South Asian countries and Africa.
Questions about the degree of effectiveness of the AstraZeneca shot have surrounded it since data published in November showed a divergence in success rates, which the developers said reflected different dosing regimens.
Britain’s medicines regulator further clouded the picture this week when it said that it had found an 80% success rate when two full doses were administered, three months apart, higher than the average that the developers themselves had found.
India drug regulator approves AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, country’s first
https://arab.news/bsw3t
India drug regulator approves AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, country’s first
- Britain and Argentina have already authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine for urgent public use
- Countries with relatively basic health infrastructure have high hopes for a shot that, unlike Pfizer’s, can be stored and transported under normal refrigeration
India plans AI ‘data city’ on staggering scale
- ‘The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius’
NEW DELHI: As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.
“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push.
“And as a nation ... we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he said ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.
Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.
And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data center in the same city.
Visakhapatnam — home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” — is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than cutting-edge technology.
But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.
“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometers wide.
Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 percent of all foreign direct investments” to India in 2025.
“It’s not just about the data centers,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre for major investors.
