hyderabad ocugen inc bharat biotechs partner for us and canada said the us drug regulator us food drug administration usfda has lifted the clinical hold on the submission of its investigational new drug ind application for indias first indigenously developed covid19 vaccine covaxin bbv152the move paves the way for the evaluation of covaxin as a covid19 vaccine candidate for the us market covaxin will be evaluated as a covid19 vaccine candidate in the united states bharat biotech tweeted on saturdaywe are pleased to be able to move our clinical programme for covaxin forward which we hope will bring us closer to offering an alternative covid19 vaccine said dr shankar musunuri chairman ceo cofounder ocugenwe firmly believe that managing this pandemic requires more than one approach to vaccines so we are heartened to be able to continue developing our vaccine candidate he addedocugen inc is codeveloping bharat biotechs covaxin vaccine candidate for covid19 in the usa and canada covaxin is a wholevirion inactivated covid19 vaccine that uses the same vero cell manufacturing platform that has been used in the production of polio vaccines for decades over 2765 crore doses of the vaccine have already been administered in india to adults as well as children in the 1518 years age bracket the vaccine received the emergency use listing nod from the world health organisation in november 2021