Forty million doses of COVID-19 vaccine produced, SII

Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine producer, has said it has made 40 million doses of AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine, and will soon begin making Novavax’s rival shot.

Earlier ICMR and SII have further collaborated for the clinical development of development of COVOVAX, developed by American company Novavax and upscaled by SII.

SII said it has enrolled 1,600 participants in India for late-stage trials of AstraZeneca’s candidate, and also plans to seek regulatory approval to run late-stage trials for Novavax vaccine.

Covishield is the AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine candidate and is the most advanced in human testing in India. SII and ICMR is planning to pursue early availability of the shot in India.

The ICMR had funded the clinical trial site fees for Covishield. SII and ICMR are currently conducting mid-stage clinical trials of the shot at 15 centres across India.

The two frontrunner coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc and Russia have shown positive results and are said to be effective by over 90% against COVID-19. Now Moderna is also getting closer to releasing the data on its late-stage trials of the corona vaccine candidate.

Meanwhile, in India, experts have said that Pfizer news may not be of much use in India as the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine needs storage at extreme cold temperature (-70 degree Celsius) and arranging such cold chains would be a huge logistical issue.