In a sign of cooling down of a vaccine war between Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute of India — firms that recently got a nod for the use of their vaccine against COVID-19 — the two pharma companies issued a joint statement on Tuesday pledging to provide global access to vaccines.

“We are fully aware of the importance of vaccines for people and countries alike, we hereby communicate our joint pledge to provide global access for our COVID-19 vaccines,” the joint statement said.

This comes a day after Krishna Ella, chairman and managing director of Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, on Monday raised questions over the approval given to Pune-headquartered Serum Institute of India (SII) for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Both companies got the nod from the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) on Sunday for the use of their vaccine against COVID-19.

Hitting out at the trial done by AstraZeneca-Oxford, Ella said that if his firm had done a vaccine trial like AstraZeneca, the Indian regulator would have “shut down the company’’. His swipe was aimed at the recent inadvertent dosing error in case of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, where a group received a half-dose and full dose regimen instead of two full doses.

On Monday, The Associated Press had quoted Adar Poonawalla of Serum Institute of Indiaas saying that India had barred the export of Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for several months.

On Tuesday, the first hint of reconciliation was a tweet Poonawalla in which he wrote, “I would like to clarify two matters; as there is confusion in the public domain, exports of vaccines are permitted to all countries and a joint public statement clearing up any recent miscommunication with regards to Bharat Biotech will be made.”