The International vaccine sharing programme COVAX has resumed exports from the Serum Institute of India. The first batches of its Covishield COVID 19 vaccine left the SII manufacturing facility in Pune on Friday for distribution to low and middle-income countries.
The firm said the SII's supply of doses via COVAX is expected to increase substantially into Q 1 of 2022.
The pharma major has surpassed its original goal to produce 1 billion doses of Covishield by the end of the year, which is linked to the resumption of exports. The firm stated that it had reached this milestone ahead of time thanks to the rapid expansion of production capacity at its Pune site.
I want to thank our workforce for their work in achieving this major milestone, with 1 billion doses of COVISHIELD now produced by SII. In March 2020, we started to invest at risk in COVID 19 vaccine production, and Serum Institute colleagues have worked tirelessly since to get these life-saving doses to people, said Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India.
SII will bring other vaccines under licence to production in order to bolster its COVID 19 vaccine output. These include Covovax, from the US-based company Novavax.
Covovax received its first Emergency Use Authorizations EUAs from regulators in Indonesia and the Philippines in November. Further regulatory reviews are pending for Covavax in India and the World Health Organization. Novavax has also submitted several regulatory filings for its vaccine around the world.
With these global collaborations and new COVID-19 vaccines such as COVOVAX entering our production lines, we can be more hopeful that WHO's target to vaccine 70% of the world's population by the middle of next year can be met, Poonawalla said.