News > India has a Covid-19 vaccine for 12-year-olds. Why hasn’t it rolled it out yet?

India has a Covid-19 vaccine for 12-year-olds. Why hasn’t it rolled it out yet?

When India’s first indigenous DNA vaccine platform, Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D vaccine, was approved for emergency use authorisation in August 2021, most expected it would be used to roll out the Covid-19 vaccination programme for the country’s children.

ZyCoV-D is the first vaccine approved for use in India in those aged 12 years and above. Instead, the government relied on Covaxin, even though it had placed an order for one crore ZyCoV-D doses and applicators costing at least Rs 385 crore.