Zydus to roll out its vaccine in September

THE AHMEDABADBASED COMPANY HAS SAID IT WILL REACH ITS TARGET OF PROVIDING 50 MILLION DOSES BY JANUARY

NEXT YEAR

NEW DELHI: Zydus Cadila, the Ahmedabad-based company whose coronavirus vaccine was granted emergency approval for use in India on Friday, has said that it expects to begin the supply of the shots by mid-to-end September and is aiming to increase production capacity by October.

The Zydus shot is the world’s first DNA-based vaccine against coronavirus disease (Covid-19) to be approved for use within a population. The three-shot vaccine is also the first to be cleared for use in children aged 12 and above and is the sixth addition to

India’s arsenal in the fight against the pandemic.

The company plans to scale up production to 10 million doses a month by October after it presses a new manufacturing plant into action, said managing director Dr Sharvil Patel. They did not elaborate on the location or details about the new plant.

The current production capacity at their existing Ahmedabad plant wasn’t immediately known, but officials said they were readying a stockpile of three to five million doses in the next few days.

“We were producing vaccines at a very small scale; now our new plant has been commissioned. We expect for the vaccine supply to start from midSeptember or end-September. We expect to reach the target of 1 crore doses in October,” said Dr Patel at a digital press briefing on Saturday.

The latest timeline given by the company means the vaccine