The Serum Institute of India said on Tuesday it plans this year to produce up to 6 crore doses of a potential vaccine against the new coronavirus that is under clinical trial in Britain.
Serum, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by volume, is mass-producing the vaccine candidate developed by the University of Oxford, which started testing it on humans last week, and is a leader in the global race to develop an antidote to the novel coronavirus.
Some 30.5 lakh people have been reported to be infected globally, and by a Reuters tally 211,376 have so far died from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
While the Oxford vaccine, called “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19”, is yet to be proven to protect against COVID-19 infection, Serum decided to start making it after it had shown pre-clinical promise and had progressed into human trials, Serum Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said.
“They are a bunch of very qualified, great scientists (at Oxford)… That’s why we said we will go with this and that’s why we are confident,” Mr Poonawalla told Reuters in a phone interview.
“Being a private limited company, not accountable to public investors or bankers, I can take a little risk and sideline some of the other commercial products and projects that I had planned in my existing facility,” Mr Poonawalla said.
More than 100 potential COVID-19 candidate vaccines are now under development by biotech and research teams around the world, and at least six of these are in preliminary testing in people in what are known as Phase 1 clinical trials.
Charlie Weller, head of vaccines at the UK-based global health charity The Wellcome Trust – which is seeking to ensure that COVID-19 funding and research efforts are global – said an effective COVID-19 vaccine would “save countless lives”.
“But alongside COVID-19 vaccine development, we must continue to focus on routine immunisation for everyone and maintain the production of existing vaccines,” she said.
Mr Poonawalla said he hoped trials of the Oxford vaccine, due to finish in about September, would be successful. Oxford scientists said last week the main focus of initial tests was to ascertain not only whether the vaccine worked but that it induced good immune responses and no unacceptable side effects.
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