With COVID 19 cases in India soaring to a shocking 8.73 million and 1,29,000 fatalities, there is a sigh of relief, as, SERUM Institute of India has produced about 40 million doses of ‘Covidshield’ the coronavirus vaccination in past two months, that has been developed by joint collaboration between University of Oxford and British biopharma company AstraZeneca.
SERUM Institute of India (SII) is set to produce 100 million doses of the vaccine, under agreement with AstraZeneca, and the same may also get emergency use authorization from GoI, if the result of the final-stage trial of the vaccine is encouraging. SII also aims to begin manufacturing Novavax Inc.’s contender soon.
On Thursday, the Indian Council of Medical Research said that and to quote “Covishield could be a realistic solution to the pandemic” and also claimed that it had completed enrolment for phase 3 clinical trials of the vaccine candidate in India.
Mr. Poonawalla the CEO of SII, said in an interview that, a full approval for the vaccine that is expected early next year will allow them the distribution of the vaccine on a 50-50 basis to the South Asian nation and Covax, the World Health Organization-backed body that is purchasing shots for poor nations.
He also said that AstraZeneca’s vaccine has a critical advantage over its rival candidate from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, as Pfizer’s vaccine which they claimed to be, more than 90% effective in stopping Covid-19 infections , needs to be transported and stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius and thus, requires an expensive cold-chain infrastructure, which according to Poonawalla is “just impossible” for most of the world when compared to the vaccine that his company will produce which can be stored at fridge temperatures.
According to the reports, the Indian government had set aside about Rs 50,000 crore ($6.7 billion) for COVID-19 vaccines on which Poonawalla had argued , India may need Rs 80,000 crore to buy and distribute the vaccine to everyone.
He also dwelled on the fact that it will take two years to witness actual reductions in the rate of infection because of affordability and manufacturing hurdles and it will take until 2024 to vaccinate the entire world.
