Right prescription

Fast-tracking of vaccine approvals is a welcome policy change

The government on Tuesday announced it had accepted a recommendation by the National Expert Group that vaccines approved by health regulators in the European Union, the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom should be granted emergency-use approval in India. Those approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) would also be eligible. Till now, the authorities had insisted even vaccines that had passed large Phase-III trials elsewhere in the world must conduct additional “bridging” trials in India. This caused major delays. It is also costly, and so pharmaceutical companies that were not expecting to make great margins on their vaccines