Serum Institute of India Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla on Monday said India should have a vaccine against the novel coronavirus ...
Serum Institute of India Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla on Monday said India should have a vaccine against the novel coronavirus by the end of 2020, reported CNBC-TV18. He added that the final pricing of the vaccine – known as Covishield in India – developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca will be announced in two months.
The Pune-based firm, which is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by volume, is expected to start trials of the vaccine candidate soon in India in partnership with the Indian Council of Medical Research. “We should have a vaccine by the end of this year,” Poonawalla told CNBC-TV18. “We will conduct trials in India on a few thousand patients in partnership with the ICMR.” Earlier, Poonawalla had said the company plans to manufacture 300 million to 400 million doses by the end of the year.
The Serum Institute of India had already received an approval from the Drug Controller General of India to conduct phase two and three human clinical trials of the coronavirus vaccine candidate. The firm had earlier said that around 5,000 people in Pune and Mumbai will be administered the vaccine by the end of August as part of the trials. The trials will last over...
