BHARAT BIOTECH TO PRODUCE 700 MN COVAXIN JABS ANNUALLY

NEW DELHI: To support vaccination campaigns in India and across the globe, Bharat Biotech has ramped up the manufacturing capacity of its Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin, to 700 million doses per annum, the vaccine maker said on Tuesday.

Manufacturing scale up has been carried out in a stepwise manner across multiple facilities at Hyderabad and Bengaluru, the company said in a statement.

Inactivated vaccines, while highly safe, are extremely complex and expensive to manufacture, resulting in lower yields when compared to live virus vaccines, it noted.

“The company is able to expand COVAXIN manufacturing capacity in a short timeline, mainly due to the availability of new specially designed BSL- 3 facilities, first of its kind for manufacturing in India that have been repurposed and preexisting expertise and know how to manufacture, test and release highly purified inactivated viral vaccines,” the company said.

Manufacturing partnerships are being explored with partners in other countries, who have prior expertise with commercial scale manufacture of inactivated viral vaccines under biosafety containment, it added.

The Hyderabad-based firm said it has partnered with Indian Immunologicals (IIL) to manufacture the drug substance for COVAXIN.

The technology transfer process is well underway and IIL has the capabilities and expertise to manufacture inactivated viral vaccines at commercial scale and under biosafety containment, it added.