Bharat Biotech has dispatched Covaxin to 11 cities in the country by air in Wednesday’s early hours. It also donated 16.5 lakh doses to the Government of India.
After receiving the government purchase order for 55 lakh doses, Bharat Biotech shipped the first batch of vaccines (each vial containing 20 doses) to Ganavaram, Guwahati, Patna, Delhi, Kurukshetra, Bangalore, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Chennai and Lucknow. While some shipments have arrived in the respective cities, others will be delivered later this evening.
Covaxin is a highly purified and inactivated two-dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, manufactured in a Vero cell manufacturing platform with a safety track record of more than 300 million doses.
This indigenous Covid-19 vaccine has been developed by the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) - National Institute of Virology (NIV). This indigenous, inactivated vaccine is developed and manufactured in Bharat Biotech's BSL-3 (Bio-Safety Level 3) biocontainment facility, one of its kind in the world.
"The evaluation of Covaxin has resulted in several unique product characteristics including long term persistence of immune responses to multiple viral proteins, as opposed to only the spike protein, and has demonstrated broad-spectrum neutralizing capability with heterologous SARS-CoV-2 strains, thus potentially reducing or eliminating escape mutants,'' the company said.
Covaxin is presented in multi-dose vials, can be stored at 2-8ºC.
Thus far, the product development and clinical trial data have generated five publications, which have been submitted to international peer-reviewed journals, 4 of which have been accepted and will be published soon. The publication of phase II trial data is undergoing the peer review process, the company said.