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JawaPos.com – The strongest candidate for the Covid-19 vaccine found by researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, is ready for mass production. The certainty was confirmed after the team saw promising results in tests on animals, namely monkeys. And it is expected to be mass produced in India in a few months.
Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker by volume, said Tuesday it was ready this year to produce up to 60 million doses of possible vaccines developed by the University of Oxford. Currently in clinical trials in the UK. So far, the vaccine candidate named “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19” has not been shown to work effectively against Covid-19 in humans.
“We decided to start producing it because it has shown success in animal testing and has evolved to be tested in humans,” said the director of the Indian Whey Institute, Adar Poonawalla, as reported by AsiaOne, Thursday (4/30).
According to The New York Times, six monkeys were exposed to a fairly new type of Corona virus. However, six monkeys remained healthy after more than 28 days, as did researcher Vincent Munster after receiving the vaccine in clinical trials.
“They are a group of great scientists at Oxford who are highly qualified. That is why we say we will do this (mass production) and that is why we are confident,” Poonawalla told Reuters in a telephone interview.
A total of 100 species are also candidates for the Covid-19 vaccine today and are being developed by biotechnology research teams around the world. Poonawalla said he hoped the Oxford vaccine trial to be completed around September would be successful.
Scientists at Oxford said last week that the main purpose of the initial tests was to determine not only if the vaccine worked, but also to induce a good immune response, and to see if there were any side effects. Serum Institute of India, owned by Cyrus Poonawalla, plans to make vaccines at its two factories in the western city of Pune, which aims to produce up to 400 million doses next year if all goes well.
“Most vaccines, at least initially, must be in our country before being exported abroad,” he said.
He claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office was involved in vaccine production and the company hoped the government would help reduce manufacturing costs. Over the next five months, he will spend around Rs 300 million to Rs 400 million to produce around 3-5 million doses per month.
It has also partnered with US biotech companies Codagenix and Themis Austria on two other Covid-19 vaccine candidates and plans to announce them in the coming weeks. The Indian Serum Board last week also agreed to invest around Rs 6 billion to create a new manufacturing unit to produce the Coronavirus vaccine.
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Publisher: Edy Pramana
Reporter: Marieska Harya Virdhani
