Covishield, a vaccine candidate that has shown promise during trials, may be ready by December 2020, Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla told News18. However, he added the caveat that “a lot is subject to UK data and also a lot depends on approvals from India’s Controller General of Drugs.”
What this means is that the company, which is developing the vaccine from the University of Oxford in India, intends to apply for an emergency authorization if the UK trial data is promising.
The government of India has indicated in the past that emergency authorization of a vaccine is likely if the need arises. Phase III trials of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine candidate are currently underway in the UK.
Covishield, developed at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford in the UK and licensed by Anglo-Swedish drug maker AstraZeneca, is currently in the final phase of clinical trials in India among nearly 1,600 people. Serum has launched a new Serum Institute Life Sciences (SILS) company that will focus exclusively on developing, producing and supplying pandemic vaccines.
On Tuesday, Poonawalla called “preliminary good news” an announcement by British pharmacist AstraZeneca that an experimental Covid-19 vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford is eliciting an immune response in both young and older adults.
“A lot of people were wondering and wondering if these first vaccines will be effective for the elderly and the most vulnerable, here’s some preliminary good news,” Poonwalla said on Twitter.
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