Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With the Government of India announcing vaccination of all the people above 18 years of age from May 1, and taking a slew of measures to speed up the availability of jabs, Bharat Biotech International Ltd (BBIL) has decided to scale up production capacity for its indigenous Covaxin against Covid-19 to 700 million doses per annum.
Last week, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) had announced financial support to four firms, including BBIL (Rs. 65 crores) and Haffkine Biopharmaceutical Corporation Ltd, to ramp up production of indigenously-developed Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin.
To ramp up production, the Centre recently fast-tracked clearance for Covid-19 vaccines approved in other countries. On Monday, the Finance Ministry approved an advance of Rs. 4,500 crores to the indigenous vaccine-makers to help them increase production.
Accordingly, the Serum Institute of India (SII), which manufactures Covishield, will get Rs.3,000 crore while Rs.1,500 crore have been provided to the Covaxin-maker Bharat Biotech.
Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech’s vaccine has received Emergency Use Authorisations (EUA) in several countries with another 60 nations in the process, including the US. Pricing for international markets and supplies to governments under EUAs have been established between $15 and $20 per dose, media reported on Tuesday.
To ramp up production capacities further, BBIL has partnered with Indian Immunologicals Ltd (IIL) to manufacture the drug substance for Covaxin. The technology transfer process is underway and IIL has the capabilities and expertise to manufacture inactivated viral vaccines at a commercial scale and under biosafety containment, the reports said.
The manufacturing scale-up has been carried out in a phased manner across multiple facilities at Hyderabad and Bangalore.
According to BBIL, it will expand Covaxin’s manufacturing capacity in a short timeline. It already has new specially designed BSL- 3 facilities, the first of its kind for manufacturing in India that have been repurposed, and pre-existing expertise and know-how to manufacture, test, and release highly purified inactivated viral vaccines.
It was exploring manufacturing partnerships in other countries, who have prior expertise with commercial-scale manufacture of inactivated viral vaccines under biosafety containment, Bharat Biotech said in a statement.
The protocols for manufacturing, testing, and release of inactivated vaccines have been tried, tested, and validated across several vaccines, which also meet the requirements of WHO, Indian, and other regulatory authorities.
These protocols have delivered consistent results over a 15-year period with more than 300 million doses supplied globally, with excellent safety and performance record, BBIL added.
