India Approves Its First Emergency-Use COVID-19 Vaccine

Some 300 million people in India are set to get the vaccine made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

What Happened: India, which has a population of 1.35 billion people, has approved its first COVID-19 vaccine and has three more in the works.

India has the second-highest number of infections among the world's countries, after the U.S. The Serum Institute of India is producing the AstraZeneca plc AZN and Oxford University vaccine, called Covishield.

The country aims to inoculate 300 million in the first six to eight months of this year, according to Reuters. Vaccinations are expected to begin within a week, according to The Hindu.

Why It Matters: Vaccine rollouts are picking up pace throughout the world. Covishield has the advantage of being easier to store and transport, not requiring the very low temperatures that others do, including the one developed by Moderna Inc MRNA and the one jointly developed by Pfizer Inc PFE and BioNTech SE – ADR (NASDAQ: BNTX). Authorities in the U.K. approved Covishield earlier in the week.