Drug maker Zydus Cadila plans to make five crore doses of its COVID-19 vaccine by the end of this year. At present, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate is in the phase III clinical trial in India. Meanwhile in the case of USA drugmaker Johnson & Johnson (J&J), it is awaiting approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to start local trials for its one-dose vaccine.
ZyCoV-D will be the first Made in India DNA vaccine candidate against COVID-19. The drugmaker will submit the trial results to the regulator by the end of this month, according to the News18 report. “We are still on track for May-end submission to the regulator once we see event data that we are expecting this month which will talk about the efficacy of the drug as the safety is already well-established,” Sharvil Patel, managing director (MD) of Zydus Group told CNBC TV18.
The company stated that it will file for an emergency use authorisation and post that we have to go through the formalities of approvals, testing, getting the plant audited, getting the Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL) testing done and then launch the product in the market,” he added.
To ramp up the production, Zydus Cadila is also looking for partners. “So that we can transfer our technology and they can manufacture additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines. We are hoping to announce a couple of partnerships in the next few weeks,” Patel said.
Meanwhile, J&J is waiting for approval from the drug controller of India to start its trials in India, according to ET. The drug maker also said that it is working with India’s Biological E on manufacturing its Covid-19 vaccine as part of a global arrangement to supply vaccines around the world.
India’s cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered is nearly 18 crore (17.93 crore, as per the 7 am provisional report of May 14). COVID-19 vaccination drive has successfully completed 118 days wherein 17.89 crore doses have been administered to the identified beneficiaries through collaborative efforts of all States/UTs.
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