Serum Institute of India (SII) and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) on Tuesday stated production of the Sputnik V vaccine would get started in September. SII and RDIF program to make 300 million doses of the vaccine annually in India at the former’s facilities in Pune.
With this agreement, RDIF expects India to be the largest production hub for the Sputnik vaccine, generating vaccines for each regional and worldwide consumption. RDIF also has signed agreements with other Indian manufactures and has stated it plans to make a total of 850 million doses per year in the nation.
The transfer of technologies to SII has began and as portion of the approach, SII has currently received cell and vector samples from the Gamaleya Center in Moscow the cultivation approach started following approval from the Drug Controller General of India.
SII has so far manufactured 500 million doses of Covishield vaccines and 332 million doses have been administered. SII has also began generating Novavax’s Covovax vaccine and will now add Sputnik to its portfolio.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO, RDIF, stated the partnership with SII was a important step to substantially boost production capabilities and that he anticipated the very first batch of the vaccine to be made jointly with SII in coming months.
Adar Poonawalla, CEO, SII, stated they would make millions of doses in the coming months with trial batches beginning in September. With higher efficacy and a very good security profile, it is important that the Sputnik vaccine was accessible to people today across India and the world.
The Sputnik V vaccine is based on a verified platform of human adenoviral vectors, which trigger the prevalent cold. The efficacy of Sputnik V is 97.6% and is administered in two doses working with two various vectors for the two shots. It also provides protection against newly detected variants, like Delta, Alpha, Beta, Gamma and the Moscow variants. The Sputnik V is stored in a standard refrigerator at 2-8 degree Celsius.