Serum Institute of India has currently created about 50 million dosages of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine ‘Covishield’ and plans to scale it up to one hundred million by March subsequent year even as it awaits approval for emergency use authorisation, a prime corporation official mentioned on Monday.
The corporation, which has launched the country’s initially indigenously created pneumococcal vaccine – PNEUMOSIL- for young children, mentioned the scaling up of the COVID-19 vaccine would also rely on the all round demand from the government.
In order to introduce an urgently required vaccine against COVID-19 in India, Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, has entered into a collaboration with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca to manufacture Covishield.
The Pune-primarily based corporation has applied to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) searching for emergency use authorisation for COVID-19 vaccine in the nation.
“We have already manufactured 40-50 million dosages of the vaccine. The rollout of the vaccine is expected to be a bit slow in the initial phase due to logistics issue and is expected to pick up once things get sorted,” SII CEO Adar Poonawalla told reporters.
He noted that the corporation plans to ramp up the vaccine production to one hundred million dosages per month by March subsequent year with the coming up of SII’s third manufacturing facility.
Poonawalla mentioned the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine could be authorized in the UK quickly.
By subsequent month, the vaccine can also be authorized in India, he noted.
Poonawalla mentioned India would get the majority of vaccines created subsequent year with some component of the production also going to other markets as component of COVAX –a worldwide initiative to assure speedy and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all nations, regardless of earnings level.
“Some shortage can be expected in the first six months. Things will ease out by August-September as other manufacturers will also start supplies,” he added.
He noted that DCGI is examining the vaccine information submitted by several firms in detail and the approvals are anticipated to come in the subsequent handful of days.
Union Minister Harsh Vardhan, who formally launched the company’s pneumococcal vaccine, mentioned everyone in the nation is searching forward to the regulatory approvals for the COVID-19 vaccine in the subsequent handful of days.
“We are all waiting for the approvals to come. We know that SII has developed capacities which can cater to India as well as many other countries through various global associations,” Vardhan mentioned.
On the new strain of coronavirus, the minister mentioned the government laboratories had currently initiated the genome sequencing work handful of months ago.
“We asked the laboratories what new is coming out in the tests…the country has the capability to fight any virus or disease,” he noted.
Besides SII, Bharat Biotech and Pfizer have also applied to DCGI searching for emergency use authorisation for their COVID-19 vaccines early this month.
When asked about SII’s progress on its personal COVID-19 vaccine, Poonawalla mentioned: “We expect it to launch in January 2022. We have already initiated Phase 1 clinical trials in the UK.” Commenting on the PNEUMOSIL launch, Poonawalla mentioned the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) has been created via a collaboration spanning more than a decade involving SII, PATH and Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
The vaccine will provide efficient and lengthy-lasting protection for young children against pneumococcal illness.
Launching the vaccine, Vardhan mentioned: “It is a significant milestone for the country’s public healthcare which will ensure that children are protected better against pneumococcal disease with an affordable and high-quality vaccine.” He mentioned the vaccine would not only assist save lives of young children in India but in other nations as properly.
Poonawalla mentioned about 68,000 young children die annually due to the pneumococcal illness in the nation and the vaccine would now assist in saving the valuable lives.
“With the best PCV, we hope to bring down the mortality rate significantly while also making our country self-sufficient with a robust public healthcare system,” he noted.
SII would provide the vaccine to each the government and the private sector players with unique costing structures.
Pneumococcal illness is a substantial contributor to the below-5 mortality price worldwide. In 2018, WHO advisable the inclusion of PCV in routine childhood immunisation programmes in all nations.