Oxford's 'Covidshield' vaccine production in India begins

The best bet in terms of COVID vaccine around the world, Covidshield is now being manufactured on a large scale at the Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune, Maharashtra. Apparently, India is the largest producer of Covidshield on the whole planet. The vaccine was declared acceptable in the result published earlier this week in magazine called The Lancet.

Officially known as the chimpanzee adenovirus-vectored vaccine (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19), the Covidshield has also shown to induce a marked increase in effective T-cell responses— an attribute that can ensure longer-term immunity.

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Executive director of Serum institute of India Mr. Suresh Jadhav said that the that the company possesses an intention to develop two to three million i.e. twenty to thirty lakh doses of the vaccine by the end of August month this year. Dr. Cyrus Poonnawalla who is the chairman of the Poonawalla group and the Serum Institute of India said that "The target is to produce at least thirty crore or three hundred million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year 2020."

Out of the three phase process, Phase I of the trial has been successfully and positively completed and are showing positive results. Phase II and Phase III trials of Covidshield are presently undergoing in Austria. It is estimated that if the developments continue at this rate the final vaccine can be expected to be completely ready by the December month of this year. 

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While India's Serum Institute is applying for for the license the commence the clinical trials. Once they receive the necessary permissions from the Drug Controller General of India, the company will commence the Phase 3 trials in Maharashtra by August 2020.

Moreover, Mumbai and Pune are shortlisted for the trials as they are the hotspots of COVID-19 cases with 1.03 lakh and 59,000 confirmed cases (as of July 22), respectively.

Trial sites will be built across these cities, and by the end of August, between 4,000 to 5,000 people will be injected with the vaccine, so as to test its efficacy on the Indian population. These trials are scheduled to last over two months.

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