Serum restarts making Covishield after over a yr

Serum Institute of India (SII) is a biopharmaceuticals and biotechnology company based in Pune, India. SII is the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines. It was founded by Cyrus Poonawalla and the parent company is Cyrus Poonawalla Group. It is a private company. Their manufactured product is served over the world. Their products are vaccines, biopharmaceuticals, generic drugs, over the counter drugs and the subsidiary companies are Bilthoven Biologicals BV, Vakzine Projektt Management GmbH. It was founded in 1966. In 2009, the company developing an internal swine flu vaccine. As of 2020, they were the largest manufacturer of vaccines by number of doses produced, manufactured around 1.5 billion doses of vaccine.

To develop covid vaccine, the company has partnered with the British- Swedish multinational pharmaceutical company named AstraZeneca, which is developing AZD1222 (covishield) partnered with University of Oxford. They had also put an agreement with Novavax to produce Covovax and manufacturing Sputnik V vaccine in India in collaboration with Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology after getting approved from DCGI (Drug Controller General of India). Serum Institute of India has restarted their production of its covid vaccine, Covishield. As the cases were less as compared to earlier times, they had 0nly put 146 vaccination sites in India and a few hundred shots per day. There was an inventory of 6 billion doses of Covovax. Only 446 doses were used within 24 hours. As the CEO Adar Poonawalla said to Business times that they had restarted the production of covishield and going to maintain an inventory piled up to 5-6 million covishield to supply to hospitals as per needs. They had restarted their production about more than a year back. He also claimed that some people are comfortable to take covishield as their third dose. They are also ready with their new Covovax vaccine to deliver. As the vaccine had supplied to US and they had given approved it and stated that it is a mix and match booster shot (heterologous vaccine). As they had tried their new samples over human blood to find out whether they work against Omicron variant especially XXB variant and this test was success that they eliminate these variants from the blood. Their new vaccine has a shelf life of 6 to 9 months. He also added to his statement that negligible demand from private hospitals as well. Even though the hospitals have vaccine shortages, the hospitals never came forward for procurement. So, he added that people should come forward to take booster doses unless the situation will become bit odd.

The government has already given first and second doses of covid vaccination to peoples and booster for significant population and they also claim that they don’t expect anymore orders from government and that had talks with private hospitals to start with small quantity orders to begin with. They had tie up with EU to supply around 5-10 million vaccine doses of Covovax. Also added that the precaution shot (Covovax) has priced at 225 rupees and hospital charges in between 100 and 150 rupees.