Infographic | How Covishield & Covaxin Compare to Moderna & Pfizer

Here’s a look at the key vaccine candidates and how they differ from each other.

The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) gave conditional emergency approval to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, being manufactured by Serum Institute (SII) here as ‘Covishield’, and granted 'emergency restricted use in emergency situation in public interest' to Bharat Biotech's Covaxin on Sunday, 3 January.

This makes them the first COVID vaccines in the country to get such authorisation.

India is the second in the world to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after the United Kingdom, where the Pfizer-BioNTech candidate had already first received the approval in December 2020.

Bharat Biotech's Covaxin is indigenously made in collaboration with the pharma major, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and National Institute of Virology (NIV).