India is gearing up for an early launch of Covid-19 vaccine, with a report suggesting it can be as early as February next year.
An Indian government-backed vaccine could be launched as early as February—months earlier than expected—as last-stage trials begin this month, said a report by news agency Reuters. Studies have so far showed it is safe and effective, a senior government scientist told Reuters.
Bharat Biotech, a private company that is developing COVAXIN with the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), had earlier hoped to launch it only in the second quarter of next year. “The vaccine has shown good efficacy,” senior ICMR scientist Rajni Kant, who is also a member of its Covid-19 task force, said at the research body’s New Delhi headquarters. “It is expected that by the beginning of next year, February or March, something would be available.”
Bharat Biotech could not immediately be contacted.
A launch in February would make COVAXIN the first India-made vaccine to be rolled out.
Meanwhile, Britain’s AstraZeneca said its deliveries were running “a little bit late” as countries around the world sought to conquer the pandemic and rescue their economies. AstraZeneca has signed multiple deals to supply more than three billion doses of its candidate to countries around the world.
AstraZeneca said on Thursday it was holding back deliveries while it awaits the data from late-stage clinical trials in order to maximise the shelf-life of supplies. “We are a little bit late in deliveries, which is why the vaccine has been kept in frozen form,” CEO Pascal Soriot said on a conference call.
AstraZeneca and its partner on the project, the University of Oxford, said that data from late-stage trials should land this year.
WITH AGENCY INPUTS