Emergency authorisation at a time when the pandemic is still raging has to prioritse safety of the vaccine, says Jacob John, former head of Centre for Advanced Research in Virology at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). While a controversy has broken out that the Bharat Biotech vaccine, Covaxin, has been given restricted use approval without efficacy data being available, John tells Ruchika Chitravanshi that given the circumstances, there were strong ethical considerations on both sides of the decision. Edited excerpts:
What do you think of the approval given to Bharat Biotech’s vaccine?
The authorised regulator did not decide