The Adar Poonawalla Indian Serum Institute is one of Astra Zeneca’s partners in the search for the vaccine and will potentially be responsible for the mass manufacture of the final product. India itself plays a key role in manufacturing 60% -70% of all vaccines sold globally, with the Serum Institute playing a leading role.
Despite the promising results, most vaccines are not 100 percent effective, and a fraction of patients generally do not show an immune response.
The history of whey
Serum was founded in 1966 by Adar’s father, Cyrus Poonawalla, and partnered with US biotech firm Codagenix, rival Novavax, and Themis of Austria to potentially manufacture three candidate vaccines that are still in development.
Previous reports on the vaccine have quoted Poonawalla saying his company will seek to produce four to five million doses of the vaccine per month, initially, and then increase the amounts to as much as 350 to 400 million doses a year.
The Serum Institute produces more than 1.5 billion doses of vaccines each year, for everything from polio to measles.
Poonawalla Price Promise
However, the trick up Poonawalla’s sleeve is not quantity, but price. He promised to keep the cost of the vaccine low, and despite the fact that the US and UK already buy close to a million doses of the vaccine, Serum remains confident in its ability to keep prices low at Rs 1000 per dose. .
The United States has secured nearly a third of the first billion doses of the potential vaccine, initially known as ChAdOx1 and now as AZD1222, pledging up to $ 1.2 billion.
Serum is also working on the design of a separate facility that is exclusively tailored to manufacture vaccines for pandemic-level diseases, once it is ready the facility could produce 700-800 million doses per year.
India recorded more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases in one day, totaling more than 11,18,000 cases with more than 27,400 deaths, even as it gradually begins to enter the second phase of its unlock plans.
Global cases are now just under Rs 1.5 million, while the death toll is just over six lakh.
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