The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca received emergency use approval in the United Kingdom on Wednesday, 30 December.

This makes it the second candidate in the country to be approved after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in December. More than 600,000 people in the UK have been vaccinated already, according to a BBC report.

The approval comes in the backdrop of a new and possibly more transmissible variant of the coronavirus causing a surge in COVID cases in the UK.

The development is crucial as it would make vaccination easier, more convenient and cheaper. The Oxford vaccine can be stored in a standard fridge unlike the extreme cold storage requirements (-70 degree C) of the Pfizer-BioNtech candidate.

The UK has already placed orders for 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine - which would vaccinate 50 million people, reported BBC.

What Does This Approval Mean for India?

For India, this is good news.

The vaccine is also being produced here under the name 'Covishield' by the Serum Institute of India (SII), which had applied for emergency use authorisation to India's drug regulator earlier this month. SII had submitted additional data required by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for determining the safety and immunogenicity of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

Adar Poonawalla, the company CEO, said on Monday, 28 December, that the firm is ready with a stockpile of around 40-50 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine ‘Covishield’.

“But it is entirely in the purview of the Indian drug controller, who needs to be given enough time to review the data from the global multi-centric trials,” he added.

“India is a part of COVAX. We will keep giving 50% of everything we make to India & to COVAX at the same time,” he said.

“Initially for the first month, we may give most of the volumes to India, because, in order to export, we have to go through the WHO pre-qualification procedure, which may take another month or so after it is licensed in India. That way, India will have priority,” he added.

Covishield has been developed at SII's laboratory in Pune with a master seed from Oxford University/AstraZeneca.

An earlier analysis by CreditSuisse has also indicated that India will depend upon Oxford, Nonovax and Johnson & Johnson for its vaccine needs. This is because their temperature range is 2-8-degree Celsius. Moderna or Pfizer do not feature in the list, the bottleneck being cold storage infrastructure (especially refrigerated vans).