The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU's top medical body, has approved only four vaccines (File)
The World Health Organization is discussing with the European Union the issue of approving India-manufactured Covishield vaccine for the group's Covid vaccination passport, Soumya Swaminathan, the UN body's Chief Scientist, told NDTV in an interview.
"...A number of countries have been moving towards using this kind of a document; it will make travel easier for (travellers of) countries where large percentage of population is vaccinated. We are now discussing with the European Union the issue of including Covishield (on the list of approved vaccines), because it is exactly the same as the vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca in Europe... so, we have made a request that all WHO-approved vaccines be included in the digital certificate (drive)," she said.
Ms Swaminathan added that WHO doesn't promote the idea of vaccination passport implemented by the European Union, as not everyone across the world has equal access to anti-Covid vaccines. She said the digital document that ensures restriction-free travel of fully vaccinated individuals across member countries could be "discriminatory".
"WHO doesn't promote the idea of vaccine passport, and we have said that consistently from the beginning because of the (vaccine) equity issue. Everyone around the world doesn't have equal access to vaccines, so using that as a passport for travel or trade could be discriminatory," she said.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU's top medical body, has approved only four vaccines for vaccination passport - Pfizer-BioNTech's Comirnaty, US pharma giant Moderna's Covid vaccine, the AstraZeneca shot manufactured and sold in Europe as Vaxzevria, and Johnson & Johnson's Janssen.
Covishield, developed by AstraZeneca and manufactured by Serum Institute, is India's vaccination mainstay.
On Thursday, nine European countries - Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Spain, Estonia and Switzerland – approved Covishield in a big win for India, sources said.