The rumor surrounding an impending COVID-19 vaccine has raised hopes for a path back to normal for the billions affected by the pandemic around the world, said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, president and managing director of Biocon Ltd. , based in Bengaluru. Mazumdar-Shaw is hoping that the vaccine will be in India in June, but also delivering the vaccine to more than 1.2 billion Indians has its own challenges.
“I hope that by January some of the other vaccines can be approved like AstraZeneca’s or one of our own Indian vaccines like Bharat Biotech’s. If we finish the clinical trials in the next 2-3 months, even those can be approved for January-February. So I would expect that in the first quarter of fiscal year 22 we should have vaccines available in India and other parts of the world, “Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said in an interview with Mint.
Mazumdar-Shaw added that they will be emergency use authorizations (US) only because it is necessary to see the durability of the responses before obtaining full approval.
Biocon, a major in biotechnology, reported on Friday a 23.01% drop in its consolidated net profit to ₹Rs 195.4 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, mainly due to higher expenses.
“We have been affected by much higher spending on research and development (R&D) that has increased almost ₹44 crore and a net loss of ₹18 crore in forex compared to a net profit last year. We have had other expenses and higher personnel costs. So I think that also resulted in moderate profitability, “said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.
The company’s R&D spending for the quarter ended September 30, 2020 was ₹148 crore against ₹104 million rupees in the same period of the previous fiscal year.
The biotech company had posted a net profit of ₹Rs 253.8 million for the prior fiscal quarter July to September. Its total consolidated income stood at ₹1,760.3 million rupees for the quarter considered. Was ₹Rs 1,605.7 crore for the same period a year ago.
Mazumdar-Shaw expects the first mRNA vaccines to be approved by the end of the year. But they won’t be available in India because they require a -80 degree cold chain and that’s not something we can handle here, he said.
Unlike the polio vaccine, the covid vaccine will be an intramuscular injection that ASHA workers and others cannot administer. It will require a large infrastructure along with a monitoring mechanism.
“It will need nurses, doctors, MBBS students to deliver the vaccine. In addition to human resources, we need to get infrastructure so that the cold chains are installed correctly. Also, it is a vaccine that has to be administered twice (one month apart) This brings a lot of complexity, “Mazumdar-Shaw said.
“You need to track the durability of the two doses to have data on traceability and chain tracking.
I think Aadhaar is the best way to do it as it allows you to do something on a massive scale in as efficient a way as any other country can do, “added the Biocon president.
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