India's government said on Thursday it has inked a deal with domestic vaccine maker Biological-E for 300 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for 15 billion rupees ($205.62 million), the first such order for unapproved shots.
The vaccine, which is currently undergoing phase-3 clinical trials, is likely to be available in the next few months, the health ministry said in a statement.
Biological E., which also has a separate deal to produce about 600 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 shot annually, said on Tuesday it entered into a licensing agreement with Providence Therapeutics Holdings to manufacture the Canadian company's mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in India.
Biological-E will run a clinical trial of Providence's vaccine in India and seek emergency use approval.
India has suffered a disastrous second wave of infections that is only now abating. Health experts say India needs to carry out mass vaccination of its 1.3 billion people to reduce the impact of subsequent waves.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has drawn criticism for a slow vaccine rollout even though India is one of the world's biggest manufacturers of doses.
Earlier in May, Biological-E Managing Director Mahima Datla had told Reuters that the company plans producing 75 million to 80 million doses a month from August.
GlaxoSmithKline sued Pfizer and BioNTech in Delaware federal court on Thursday, accusing them of infringing GSK patents related to messenger RNA (mRNA) technology in the companies' blockbuster COVID-19 vaccines.
Israel's military is poised to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah and assault Hamas hold-outs in the southern Gaza Strip city, a senior Israeli defence official said, despite international warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Relentless rains, hail and winds of near hurricane intensity battered southern China, forcing the evacuation of an entire town of more than 1,700 people in the province of Guangdong, media said on Thursday.
Marine wildlife experts were frantically trying to rescue some 140 pilot whales stranded on Thursday in the shallow waters of an estuary in the southwest of the state of Western Australia.
A grand jury has charged 18 people with allegedly participating in an Arizona fake elector scheme to re-elect then-US President Donald Trump in 2020, the state's attorney general said on Wednesday.
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