India's first Covid vaccine-Serum Institute's 'Covishield'- are going to be commercialised in 73 days. Indians are going to be immunised free under the National Immunisation Programme (NIP) as is that the case with all other vaccines under the programme.
"The government has given us a 'special manufacturing priority license' and fast-tracked the trial protocol processes to get the trials completed in 58 days. By this, the first dosing is happening from today in the final phase (Phase III) and the second dosing will happen after 29 days. the final trial data will be out in another 15 days from the second dosing. By that time, we are planning to commercialise Covishield," a Serum Institute of India (SII) top official exclusively revealed.
Earlier, the third phase trials were expected to require a minimum 7-8 months.
The trial among 1600 volunteers at 17 centres, each with about 100 volunteers, started on Aug 22.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has also said that one among our COVID-19 vaccine candidates is within the third phase of the clinical test . "We are very confident that a vaccine will be developed by end of this year," he said.
The source said the vaccine will belong to Serum Institute, because the company has entered into an exclusive agreement with Astra Zeneca to shop for rights and pay a royalty fee for exclusively selling it in India and 92 other countries. The central government has already indicated to SII that it'll directly procure the vaccines and is getting to immunise Indians for free of charge . Centre has sought 68 crore doses for 130 crore Indian citizens from Serum Institute by June, next year.
For the rest, it's likely to put orders with 'Covaxine' being developed by ICMR and Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila's 'ZyCoV-D' if their trials proceed successfully.
Bharat Biotech is yet to point when it might start and finish the trials, though Bharat Biotech's CMD Krishna Ella had said that to make sure safety and efficacy it might not expedite the vaccine with short-cuts.
Serum is beginning to manufacture 6 crore doses per month which can be increased to 10 crore per month by April, 2021. this is often being done by re-engineering its vaccine manufacturing lines that it's spent nearly Rs 200 crore. SII, the most important vaccine maker within the world, features a capacity to form 150 crore doses a year.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has agreed to fund Serum with about $150 million (nearly Rs 1125 crore) to supply and provide around 10 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccine for supply to low income countries. which will help SII to scale back the worth to about Rs 250 per dose from over Rs 1,000 per dose, the source said.
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