Serum Institute to kickstart production of Covovax vaccine at Pune facility

Pune, June 26: Serum Institute of India (SII) is going to kickstart the production of the first batch of the new Covid-19 vaccine ‘Covovax’, developed by Novavax, at their facility in Pune.

 

 

“A new milestone has been reached. This week we began our first batch of Covovax (a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Novavax) at our facility, here in Pune,” Serum Institute said in an official statement. "Excited to witness the first batch of Covovax (developed by @Novavax) being manufactured this week at our facility in Pune," Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla tweeted.

 

 

 

Covovax has been developed by Novavax, a firm based in Maryland, United States. Earlier this month, the firm said its coronavirus vaccine had been found safe and over 90% effective.

In August 2020, American vaccine company Novavax Inc had announced a license agreement with SII for the development and commercialization of NVX-CoV2373, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, in low and middle-income countries and India.

 

According to reports SII is expected to begin clinical trials of the Novavax vaccine for children in July of this year. SII plans to test Covovax on 920 children - 460 each in the 12-17 and the 2-11 age groups - starting next month. The trials will be carried out at 10 sites across India.

 

It should be noted that two firms, Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila as already started clinical trials of Covaxin for children 12 to 18 years of age. Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has started clinical trials on 525 children at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi and Patna.

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