India has on Friday given approval for the sixth Covid-19 vaccine for the country and the brand new one comes with the tag of being the world's first DNA vaccine against the pandemic. The Drug Controller of India has nodded for the emergency use of Zydus Cadila's three-dose Covid-19 vaccine in adults and children aged 12 years and above. Significantly, the sixth vaccine has entered the country two weeks after India introduced its fifth vaccine to beat the pandemic. 

Zydus Cadila has said that it has planned to manufacture 100 million to 120 million doses of ZyCoV-D pandemic annually and has started to stock the doses. According to reports, Cadila has applied for the authorization of its vaccine on July 1, based on the efficacy rate of 66.6 per cent in a trial of over 28,000 volunteers worldwide. Zydus Cadila's vaccine is developed in collaboration with the Department of Biotechnology and it has become the second indigenous vaccine to receive emergency authorization in India after Bharat Biotech's Covaxin. 

The company has affirmed in July that its Covid-19 vaccine was effective against the new variants including the Delta variant and the shot is administered using a needle-free applicator instead of traditional syringes. ZyCoV-D is the world's first plasmid DNA vaccine against the Coronavirus and the vaccine uses a section of genetic material from the virus that gives instructions either to DNA or RNA to develop a specific protein that the immune system recognises and responds to. It must be noted that the DNA vaccines had previously worked well in animals, not in humans. 

After getting administered, this DNA vaccine will teach the body's immune system to fight the real virus and the experts say that the DNA vaccines are cheap, safe, and stable and they can be stored at higher temperatures - 2 to 8C. Cadila Healthcare has said that its vaccine had shown good stability at 25C for at least three months and this factor will be helping the vaccine doses to be transported and stockpiled easily. The emergency authorization has come when the country has been preparing to vaccinate minors below 18 years of age while there has been a vaccination drive to inoculate doses for people who are above 18. 

According to reports, India has given more than 570 million doses of three previously approved vaccines - Covishield, Covaxin, and Sputnik V, and about 13% of adults have been fully vaccinated and 47% have received at least one shot since the beginning of the vaccination programme in January this year. Earlier this month, the Union government has given Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the vaccine developed by global healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson. 

While Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single-dose vaccine, Cadila's DNA vaccine must be inoculated for three doses. With the latest development, India has six Covid-19 vaccines in its territory - Serum Institute of India's Covishield, Bharat Biotech's Covaxin, Russia's Sputnik V, America's Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, and Zydus Cadila's ZyCoV-D vaccine, which is the second indigenous vaccine in India.