Serum Institute of India (SII), the vaccine manufacturing giant, announced on Twitter on Monday that it had urgently requested regulatory approval to manufacture the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca / Oxford, in the second country the most populous in the world.
“As promised, before the end of 2020, @SerumInstIndia has applied for emergency use authorization for the first vaccine made in India, COVISHIELD,” tweeted Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla.
“This will save countless lives,” he added. SII is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by volume.
India, with 1.3 billion inhabitants, is the second most contaminated country by Covid-19 in the world in absolute value with more than 9.6 million cases.
Mr Poonawalla’s announcement comes days after US giant Pfizer and German company BioNTech applied for approval of their own vaccine in India, local press reported on Sunday.
The advantage of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine for India is that it can be stored at refrigerator temperature, between two and eight degrees Celsius, while that of Pfizer / BioNTech requires to be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius. degrees Celsius.
Mr Poonawalla told NDTV last month that SII had already produced 40 million doses of the vaccine to date, and that he planned to produce up to 100 million by January.
He expects 90% of Serum Institute doses to be sold to the Indian government for around 250 rupees (three dollars) each.
The Indian Ministry of Health has indicated that the first to benefit from the vaccination will be health workers, front-line workers, including the police, paramilitaries, and people over the age of 65.
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