New Delhi: India's first intranasal vaccine against Covid-19 iNCOVACC was launched by Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya and Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh in New Delhi on Republic Day on Thursday.

The drug regulator Drugs Controller General of India (DGCA) had approved the nasal vaccine in November for restricted emergency use among adults. Prior to the approval, the vaccine candidate was evaluated in phases I, II and III clinical trials with successful results.

iNCOVACC, which is a needleless booster for Covid-19, is a recombinant replication-deficient adenovirus vectored vaccine with a pre-fusion-stabilised SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

The Centre has made this intranasal vaccine iNCOVACC available on CoWin. However, this will be first made available in private hospitals. The vaccine is priced at Rs 800 per dose for the private markers and Rs 325 per dose for central and state governments and these prices are excluding GST.

The intranasal vaccine was developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech. According to the sources to news agency ANI, the intranasal heterologous booster dose is likely to be made available in the market by February last week.

Recently, Krishna Ella, the company’s chairman and managing director, had said, “Our nasal vaccine will be officially launched on January 26, on Republic Day.”

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