Centre Books 30 Crs Of Hyd’s Biological-E Vaccines

The Indian government has booked 30 crore doses of Hyderabad-based Biological-E’s Covid vaccine, which is yet to finish its clinical trials. After Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, Biological-E would be the second made-in-India vaccine as the Health Ministry is all set to make an advance payment of ₹ 1,500 crores to the company.

The ministry confirmed that Biological-E will manufacture the doses and stockpile them from August to December and is likely to be available “in the next few months”. Currently, Biological-E’s vaccine is in Phase-3 clinical trials followed by showcasing optimistic results in Phase 1 and 2. Amid the catastrophic second wave, India faced a vast criticism of the Centre’s vaccination policy, where vaccines became scarce.

Now there is a change from the past few months in India as the govt stopped exports of vaccine to meet the domestic needs. The hiccups that are straining our vaccine production is the raw materials supply ban by the US and EU, from March onwards. There are many mixed factors to analyse for shortage and one of them is due to a sudden surge in the number of cases from many states simultaneously.

This chain of events which is nothing short of a bolt from the blue seems to have caught the authorities off-guard for which no cogent answer seems to be available. And now, the slow roll-out has become the main concern as experts warn of the third wave of Covid. It is also high time for India to look into this opportunity to locally develop critical raw materials for vaccine production, which we sure can, at this critical hour. Biological-E is now raising hopes to meet domestic demands.

The government said Biological-E’s shot was given Rs 100 crore in financial assistance by the Department of Biotechnology, which also collaborated with the company to conduct several studies. The National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 or NEGVAC has recommended Biological-E’s indigenous for approval. The company also has a parallel deal to produce about 600 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 shot annually.