It is good news as COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the country and the vaccine stocks are near to dry up. The manufacturing of the first batch of Covovax vaccine has started at the Pune facility of the Serum Institute of India, the firm announced on Friday.
¡°A new milestone has been reached; this week we began our first batch of Covovax (a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Novavax) at our facility, here in Pune: Serum Institute India," the company shared on Twitter.
The SII is hoping to launch Novavax¡¯s COVID-19 vaccine ¡®Covovax¡¯ in India by September as its trials are in an advanced stage of completion, its CEO Adar Poonawalla had earlier said.
The jab is more than 90 per cent effective, the American vaccine maker said earlier this month, after a US study.Adar Poonawalla, the CEO Of SII, this afternoon tweeted: "Excited to witness the first batch of Covovax (developed by @Novavax) being manufactured this week at our facility in Pune. The vaccine has great potential to protect our future generations below the age of 18. Trials are ongoing. Well done team @seruminstindia! (sic)." The Serum Institute of India is the world's largest vaccine maker.
India is yet to give an approval to a coronavirus vaccine for children. So far, three vaccines - Bharat Biotech's Covaxin, the SII's Covishield and Sputnik V - have been cleared for adults. Sources have said the SII plans to start Covovax trials for children next month.
In September 2020, Novavax announced a manufacturing agreement with SII for its COVID-19 vaccine NVX-CoV2373. CNBC-TV18 reported according to Poonawalla, the trial of Novavax¡¯s coronavirus vaccine in India is likely to conclude by November. The pharmaceutical giant can apply for a vaccine license even before its trial in the country concludes on the basis of the global data of the trial, he had added.
Novavax in a statement on June 14 had stated that the vaccine candidate ¡®NVX-CoV2373¡¯ demonstrated 100 percent protection against moderate and severe Covid-19 infection- 90.4 percent efficacy overall. And it also met the primary endpoint in its PREVENT-19 pivotal Phase 3 trial.
The statement further mentioned that the study enrolled 29,960 participants across 119 sites in the US and Mexico to evaluate efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of the vaccine.
Novavax¡¯s coronavirus vaccine has demonstrated 90 percent efficacy against predominantly circulating variants of concern and variants of interest, Novavax said in the statement.