Wockhardt to make 620 mn Sputnik doses in two years
Mumbai-headquartered drug maker Wockhardt on Friday said it signed an agreement with Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) arm Enso Healthcare to make 620 million doses of Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines over the next two years.
This is double the amount of doses Serum Institute of India (SII) will make of the Russian vaccine, and cumulatively will take the Sputnik V manufacturing capacity in India to 1.7 billion doses annually.
However, RDIF’S partner in India, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL), has so far been importing the vaccine, and locally manufactured doses are yet to be available.
The agreement between Wockhardt and RDIF was reached under the aegis of Enso Healthcare (part of Enso Group), RDIF'S coordination partner for sourcing Sputnik V vaccines in India.
The term of the manufacturing contract is up to June 2023 for making up to 620 million doses of Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines. Wockhardt said in a stock-exchange notification that according to the agreement, 70-120 million injection doses will be contract-manufactured till June 30, 2022 and, thereafter, the contract may be extended to June 30, 2023, for a further 500 million doses. This is subject to ‘certain conditions’, Wockhardt said.
Sputnik V is a heterogeneous vaccine, which uses two different human adenoviruses in the two doses. Sputnik Light is the first dose component of Sputnik V, which uses human adenovirus Ad26.
Habil Khorakiwala, founder-chairman of Wockhardt Group, said: “As per the pact, Wockhardt will commence production of the Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines in the Aurangabad biotechnology facility and another facility that we have re-purposed for the same starting January 2022.”
To date, the Sputnik V vaccine has been registered in 69 countries globally with a total population of over 3.7 billion people. In particular, Sputnik V demonstrates 83.1 per cent efficacy against the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Sputnik V is also 94.4 per cent effective against hospitalisations with 18 times reduction in hospitalisation risk, the statement claimed.