Updated: November 20, 2020 7:08:08 am
The candidate, who is being manufactured by SII under an agreement with Oxford-AstraZeneca, is the pioneer in India’s own race to find a vaccine to defeat the novel coronavirus. (Photo of Fie)
Serum Institute of India (SII) will likely apply to India’s top drug regulator next month for emergency approval for limited use of ‘Covishield’ in frontline workers and the elderly, the manufacturer’s chief executive said on Thursday. based in Pune at a media summit. .
Covishield is the Indian name for the Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. Promising results on the candidate’s efficacy in vulnerable age groups were published in The Lancet Thursday.
The candidate, who is being manufactured by SII under an agreement with Oxford-AstraZeneca, is the pioneer in India’s own race to find a vaccine to defeat the novel coronavirus.
Covishield is likely to be available to the rest of the public in March-April 2021, SII CEO Adar Poonawalla said at the HT Leadership Summit.
The vaccine, which can be stored at temperatures between 2 ° C and 8 ° C, could cost between Rs 500 and Rs 600 in the private market for the general public, Poonawalla said.
The government, he said, will get the vaccine at “a much lower price” of around $ 3 to $ 4 (roughly Rs 225-300), “because they will buy large volumes” of “hundreds of millions” of doses.
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But “the general public, as I mentioned, will probably have to pay around Rs 500-600,” Poonawalla said, adding that this would be “much cheaper and more affordable” than some of the other vaccines on the market today.
“As soon as the UK authorities, the MHRA (Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency) and the EMEA (European Medicines Agency) approve it for emergency use, we will apply to the Controller of Medicines (DCGI) in India and, hopefully, very soon, we will also be able to obtain an emergency use authorization, ”said Poonawalla.
“Again, that will be, just to clarify, limited use for frontline workers, the elderly … it will take another three or four months before it is available to the general public, because that’s the way the emergency use license will probably work, “he said.
“We are basing the assumption of an emergency license based on positive UK results… if we have a good UK result in late November or early December we request an emergency license use. So you have the vaccine for, again, vulnerable populations for January-February and then … March-April for the general public, ”Poonawalla said.
“If everything goes according to plan, these are the timelines we’re looking at.”
With India seeking around 300-400 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine by July 2021, IBS is “gearing up” to increase its production and still has “a few hundred million” doses left to offer to the mechanism COVAX led by Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, said Poonawalla.
“At the moment, we have a dose capacity of 50 to 60 million per month as an output. By February, we will have gone to 100 million doses a month, ”he said.
The firm has already dedicated two facilities to the manufacture of this vaccine and will dedicate two more in February to double its monthly production for both India and COVAX. These additional installations are currently being validated.
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