216 crore vaccine doses to be available by December : GoI
Any vaccine that is approved by FDA, WHO can come to India
New Delhi: India, which is facing acute shortage of vaccines amid the deadly second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, is eying to manufacture 2 billion doses of vaccine between August-December. Most of this vaccine will be produced in India and additionally other foreign vaccines will also available by that time.
“ About 216 crore doses of vaccines will be manufactured in India between August-December – for India and for Indians. There should be no doubt that vaccine will be available for all as we move forward: Dr VK Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog.
Out of the 216 crore doses, Serum Institute of India (SII) will provide 75 crore doses of Covishield, Bharat Biotech will provide 55 crore doses of Covaxin. SII will also produce 20 crore doses of Novavax and Bharat Biotech will produce 10 crore doses of its single dose nasal vaccine. The production of Sputnikp-V vaccine is expected to start from July and 15 crore doses of this vaccine will be available by December.
Apart from these, two other made-in-India vaccines- Bio E Sub Unit Vaccine and cadilla’s Zycove-D vaccine, which are currently in their late stage trials and have shown promising results, will be available. While 30 crore doses of Bio E and 5 crore doses of Zycov-D will be available by December.
Dr Paul maintained that the government of India has taken steps to speed up the approval process of foreign vaccines. Any vaccine that is approved by FDA, WHO can come to India. Import license will be granted within 1-2 days. No import license is pending.
“Dept of Biotechnology, other departments concerned, MEA have been in touch with Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson from beginning. They were officially asked if they’d like to send doses to or manufacture in India, we’ll find partners & assist. They had said that they are working in their own way and they would talk of vaccine availability in Q3, in 2021. We are connected to them. I’m hopeful that they’ll step forward to increase availability in India” he said.