Bharat Biotech To Increase Production Of Covaxin By Additional 200 Million Doses Per Year

Bharat Biotech announced that it is planning to increase the manufacturing capacity of Covaxin, its Covid-19 vaccine, by an additional 200 million doses per year. This announcement was made by the company on Thursday after many states complained about vaccine shortage.

The vaccine maker has ramped up the manufacturing capacity at its subsidiary's Ankleshwar-based facility in Gujarat. The Ankleshwar plant would start rolling out the much in demand vaccine from the fourth quarter of the year, the company said.

"We are planning to produce 200 million doses of Covaxin per year in its GMP facilities that are already operational for the production of vaccines based on Inactivated Vero Cell Platform Technology, under stringent levels of GMP and biosafety," Bharat Biotech said.

Also Read: Bharat Biotech: Covaxin is Effective Against India, UK COVID strains

The Hyderabad-based company, earlier in April, stated that it ramped up the production capacity to 700 million doses per annum. Besides this, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has recently approved the phase 2 and 3 clinical trials of the vaccine in the age group of 2 to 18 years
Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech in association with the Indian Council of Medical Research and the National Institute of Virology, is the only made-in-India Covid shot.

The second "Covishield"  being used in India is the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by the Serum Institute. Recently, Dr Reddys Laboratories had agreed to manufacture Russia's vaccine Sputnik-V in India.