The Centre on Tuesday cleared two more vaccines and one anti-viral drug to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.
The two latest vaccines cleared by India are Corbevax and Covovax, sources said.
The anti-viral drug Molnupiravir can be used during emergency.
Corbevax is India’s first homegrown “RBD protein sub-unit vaccine”, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted this morning.
Its the third vaccine in India,” Mr Mandaviya said. The other two vaccines developed in India are Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and the Serum Institute of India’s (SII) Covishield.
The nanoparticle vaccine, Covovax, will be manufactured by the Pune-based SII.
The anti-viral drug Molnupiravir will be manufactured in India by 13 companies for restricted use under emergency situation to treat adult patients with Covid-19 and who have high risk of progression of the disease, the Health Minister said.
With the latest approvals, a total of eight Covid-19 vaccines have got emergency use authorisation from India’s drug regulator – Covishield, Covaxin, ZyCoV-D, Sputnik V, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, Corbevax and Covovax.
The US Food and Drug Administration recently allowed Merck’s Molnupiravir for treatment of mild-to-moderate Covid-19 cases in adults who are at risk for severe disease.
In a clinical trial of high-risk people during the early course of illness, Merck’s drug was shown to reduce hospitalisations and deaths by around 30 per cent.