Chief Executive Officer of the Pune-based Serum Institute Of India (SII) Adar Poonawalla on Monday said the company is expecting the vaccine for COVID-19 to be ready by the year-end.
The Institute has partnered with British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca to manufacture and supply the vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford under which the SII will supply over a billion doses of vaccine in India, and to other developing and under-developed countries.
However, the approval for the vaccine from the Drug Controller General of India is still awaited. The company is expecting approval in another six months.
Hinting about the letter written by ICMR director general Balram Bhargava to Bharat Biotech International Ltd over speeding up the trials for ‘Covaxin’, Poonawalla said, ‘We do not want to rush anything. We want to emphasize safety and efficacy, and once we are confident of a good and safe vaccine, we will announce it but that is still six months away from now,’ The Mint quoted.
The vaccine developed by Oxford University is currently in the most advanced stage of a clinical trial. The study of phase 1 and phase 2 is ongoing with almost 10,000 participants. Poonawalla further said that the trials for the vaccines will be over by the end of the year.
He was speaking at the launch of Compact XL, a compact diagnostics machine by MyLab Discovery Solutions, that will automate lab processes from sample handling to preparing RT-PCR tubes.
The institute has invested in MyLab in order to scale up the production of COVID-19 testing kits. According to the Firm’s statement reported by News18, MyLab will ramp up its production capacity of 1.5 lakh test units to 20 lakh units per week within the next few weeks, an increase of 13 times in current production capacity.
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