India gave emergency approval to Johnson and Johnson's single-shot COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday (Aug 7) to ramp up its flailing immunisation campaign as fears grow of a new wave of infections.
Health minister Mansukh Mandaviya said the approval will boost the fight against the pandemic in India, where at least 200,000 people died in a brutal two-month wave up to mid-June.
No indication has been given as to when the US company's doses will reach India.
The nation of 1.3 billion people has administered 500 million vaccine doses so far, but barely 8 per cent of the population has had two shots.
Johnson and Johnson's vaccine is the fifth to be approved after Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield, the home developed Covaxin, Russia's Sputnik V, and the US-made Moderna jab.
India remains the second worst-hit nation after the United States, with more than 32 million confirmed cases and 427,000 deaths. Because of under-reporting experts say the real toll is much higher.
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