Gujarat India based Zydus Cadila‘s Covid-19 vaccine ZyCoV-D, meant for adults and children aged 12 years and above, was today approved for “restricted use in emergency situation” by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) which is India’s regulator.

The DNA vaccine, developed in partnership with India’s Department of Biotechnology, uses a section of genetic material from the Covid virus that gives instructions as either DNA or RNA to make the specific protein that the human immune system recognizes.

The vaccine is needle-free and is administered intradermally in three doses — the second and third ones on the 28th and 56th day after the first. ZyCoV-D showed an efficacy rate of 66.6 percent in a late-stage trial of 28,000 volunteers.

The company already has a stockpile of doses and plans to manufacture up to 120 million doses annually.

The parent company Cadila Healthcare Limited is an Indian multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat primarily engaged in the manufacture of generic drugs. It ranked 100th in the Fortune India 500 list in 2020 according to Wikipedia.