Form of words:
New Delhi: Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Mansukh Mandaviya on Sunday released the first commercial batch of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin from its new facility in Ankleshwar, Gujarat, stating that it has the capacity to produce over 1 crore doses per month .
Mandaviya shared this news on his personal Twitter account on Sunday.
️Corona @BharatBiotech How #COVAXIN First done the commercial batch.
There will be no case whatsoever to apply. pic.twitter.com/Z2NzvRwEuj
— Mansukh Mandaviya (@mansukhmandviya) August 29, 2021
Covaxin will be manufactured at the Chiron Behring facility in Ankleshwar, which is already one of the largest producers of rabies vaccine. Bharat Biotech acquired Chiron Behring Pvt Ltd in 2019, which is now a 100 per cent subsidiary.
According to the company’s press release, “Chiron Behring Vaccines is a WHO pre-qualified manufacturer of rabies vaccines, qualified for supply to United Nations agencies and has product registrations in more than 20 countries”.
Covaxin is based on a ‘whole-virion inactivated Vero cell-derived platform technology’ (or inactivated virus technology) and additional plants that have been remodeled, including the one at Ankleshwar, are already producing vaccines with this technology. were produced and had stringent biosafety. measure, the company said in its release.
Read also: Bharat Biotech and NIV say COVID vaccines may be available for children by September
how the work started
In May, the company announced that it would increase its supply of Covaxin by repurposing its Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) facilities, which were already manufacturing the ‘Passive Vero Cell Platform’-based technology, and They were supposed to increase the supply by 200 million. Dosage.
ThePrint has learned that the company has added additional lines at these plants so that there is no cut in manufacturing of other vaccines. It took about three months to finally get these plants ready to go into production.
In May, the Bombay High Court allowed the company to use the plant owned by Intervet India Pvt Ltd in Pune to augment supplies of Covaxin. Intervet India was already producing veterinary vaccines and was about to be shut down for commercial reasons – when Bharat Biotech was allowed to use the ready-to-use facility.
In the same month, the company also renovated its Malur plant in Karnataka’s Kolar district, which, according to the health minister, can produce 4-5 crore doses a month by August 2021.
At present, the company has provided around 25 million doses per month to India, which according to the government is likely to increase to 6-7 crore monthly doses by September.
“The company has already deployed several production lines at its Hyderabad, Malur, Bengaluru and Pune campuses, and the addition of Chiron Behring, Ankleshwar will further enhance its Covaxin production capacity. A new filing facility built during 2020 is now being used to produce Covaxin”, read its press release.
The Bharat Biotech vaccine requires two doses to be given in a span of 4-6 weeks and its effectiveness against coronavirus is 77.8 per cent. The short duration of complete vaccination makes Bharat Biotech’s vaccine contribution important in India’s race against the coronavirus.
(Edited by Paramita Ghosh)
Read also: India will have 18-22 crore vaccine doses by September, ZyCoV D may take longer to reach the market
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