Zydus Cadila has received an order to supply one crore doses of ZyCoV-D, the world’s first Plasmid DNA COVID-19 vaccine, to the Government of India at Rs 265 per dose and the needle-free applicator being offered at Rs 93 per dose, excluding GST, said the company on Monday.
According to a statement issued by Zydus Cadila, the pricing has been decided in consultation with the Government of India. Speaking on the development, the Managing Director of the company, Dr Sharvil Patel said, “We are happy to support the Government’s vaccination programme with ZyCoV-D. The needle-free application of the vaccination, we hope, will motivate many more to vaccinate and safeguard themselves from COVID-19, especially children and young adults in the age group of 12 to 18 years.”
ZyCoV-D is the first DNA plasmid vaccine in the world for human use, developed indigenously by the company against the Covid-19 virus. It is also the first COVID-19 vaccine that is needle-free and administered using PharmaJet, a needle-free applicator to ensure painless intradermal vaccine delivery which also leads to a significant reduction in any kind of major side effects.
ZyCoV-D has shown good stability at temperatures of around 25 degrees for atleast three months. The thermostability of the vaccine will help in easy transportation and storage of the vaccine without any problems of fluctuations in temperature.
For prolonged use, a temperature of 2-8 degrees is sufficient. Also being a DNA plasmid vaccine, ZyCoV-D doesn’t have any problem associated with vector-based immunity. The DNA Plasmid platform allows generating new constructs quickly to deal with mutations in the virus.