India has ramped up its coronavirus vaccine production amid warnings of a third wave.
It has approved Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine for emergency use.
The vaccine, which has shown 85% efficacy, will be introduced in India through a supply agreement with homegrown vaccine maker Biological E.
It's still unclear when the vaccine will be available for use in India - Johnson & Johnson said it was too early to give a delivery timeline.
India has so far given more than 500 million doses of three approved vaccines - Covishield, Covaxin and Russia's Sputnik V.
Johnson & Johnson's jab is the second foreign vaccine to be granted emergency use authorisation in India. This is under a new policy that doesn't require manufacturers to conduct local clinical trials if the vaccine has already been approved by the WHO or regulators in the United States, EU, UK and Japan.
In June, the federal government gave approval to Indian pharma company Cipla to import Moderna vaccine - it has shown nearly 95% efficacy. But jabs are yet to arrive as the company is locked in a tussle with India's federal government - Moderna wants legal protection against claims arising from using the vaccines (which no vaccine maker in India has at the moment) and India has refused so far.
India has reported nearly 32 million Covid cases, second only to the United States, which has reported more than 35 million cases.
Daily case counts have fallen sharply from a high of 400,000 at the peak of the second wave, but they still average around 30,000 to 40,000. And experts have warned that a third wave of infections is inevitable.
The country is also only the third in the world to record more than 400,000 deaths - behind the US and Brazil.
The government aims to vaccinate all Indians by the end of this year, but the drive has been hobbled by slow pace, shortage of doses and vaccine hesitancy.
About 11% of the people have been fully vaccinated since the beginning of the drive in January.
To make up for lost time, the government is now accelerating vaccine production and procurement.
It is preparing to use a local version of Novavax vaccine, which will be produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII). The vaccine was more than 90% effective in a late-stage US-based clinical trial, according to the company.
The government has also ordered 300 million doses of another vaccine from Indian firm Biological E.
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