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India said on Tuesday said it had no concerns over the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine despite South Africa putting it on hold, and ordered 10 million more doses of this shot for its huge immunisation campaign.
South Africa delayed use of the vaccine after investigators found it provided minimal protection against mild-to-moderate COVID-19 disorder caused by the country’s dominant coronavirus variant.
India, with the highest number of infections after the United States, has yet to detect the South African version and will continue to use the vaccine in an inoculation drive that’s covered 6.3 million front-line employees since January 16.
“Our vaccination programme is robust and legitimate, and I assure you that we are going ahead with it, not stressed at this time,” Vinod Kumar Paul, a top Indian vaccine officer, told a news conference.
“We will intensify our surveillance and we will be watching other developments in due course.”
The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, has licenced the vaccine from AstraZeneca and Oxford University and markets it as COVISHIELD for low-and middle-income nations.
India has purchased 10 million more doses of COVISHIELD on top of 11 million provided earlier, an SII spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday. SII has agreed to sell at least 100 million doses to the authorities at a discounted cost of 200 rupees ($2.74) each, although the government says firm orders will be staggered according to its own requirements, and also on vaccine shelf-life.
COVISHIELD is roughly 72 percent effective, according to late-stage trials performed abroad, India’s drug regulator states.
The nation is also utilizing the COVAXIN shot developed at home by Bharat Biotech with the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research. Bharat Biotech has provided 5.5 million doses to the authorities and is selling 4.5 million more, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.
The government wants to pay 300 million people from August, reaching the elderly and those with existing conditions by March.
India has reported 10.85 million infections and more than 155,000 deaths – though cases have dropped sharply since September.
MAKE IN INDIA
Paul said Johnson & Johnson could fabricate its shot in India. He also said many more offenses, such as Russia’s Sputnik V, Cadila Healthcare’s ZyCov-D and a Novavax product, were in the queue.
“India is fortunate to have two excellent made-in-India vaccines, and as many as six-seven vaccines in the pipeline and possibly many more,” he said, days after Pfizer Inc pulled an application seeking emergency-use authorisation from the country.
The U.S. firm had declined to immediately do a tiny regional safety study for its shot and produce it in India, unlike the other vaccine developers.
New Delhi, meanwhile, is aggressively pushing the SII and Bharat Biotech vaccines abroad as part of a diplomatic campaign to recoup ground lost to China.
The business expects results from an ongoing trial involving 25,800 participants in India only by March, although the country’s drug regulator has called the vaccine safe and effective amid criticism from doctors and health experts. A research on 26 participants has found COVAXIN effective against the UK strain of the coronavirus.
Bharat Biotech has also implemented to conduct a Phase III trial for COVAXIN in Brazil, which intends to import 8 million doses in February and another 12 million in March.
Bharat Biotech has sought emergency use authorisation from the Philippines.
