India will get 50% of Oxford Coronavirus vaccine doses produced; Serum Institute of India will start Phase 3 trials of vaccine in August: Adar Poonawalla

Even as the world continues to struggle with the novel coronavirus disease, the results of the early trials of the coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by Oxford University have reignited a new ray of hope. The much-awaited result of Phase I/II of human trials of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 have been published in UK-based science journal The Lancet. As per the report, the vaccine candidate displayed extremely encouraging results in early trials and was able to develop a safe and effective immune system response in the volunteers.

The promising COVID-19 vaccine was developed by the scientists of the Jenner Institute (Oxford University) and British-Swedish pharma firm, AstraZeneca has been given the license to mass-produce the potential vaccine. The UK drug giant has teamed up with Pune-based Serum Institute of India, which is the largest vaccine maker in the world by volume, to manufacturer 1 billion doses of the vaccine candidate developed by the University of Oxford.

Currently, AstraZeneca is already conducting Phase III trials of the potential vaccine (now known a Covishield) in Brazil, South Africa and the UK. After the promising results of Phase I/I trials of Covishield, Serum Institute of India is all set to begin Phase III (last stage) human trials in India in the month of August.

After the early trials established that Oxford’s coronavirus vaccine was well-tolerated and induced protective antibodies and T-cell immune responses in the volunteers, Phase III trials will give the decisive information about how much protection does it provide against COVID-19. In a media statement, Adar Poonawalla who is the chief executive officer of the Serum Institute of India said that third phase trials of Covidshield will begin in August and they plan it to wrap it up by October- November.

Speaking to India Today, Adar Poonawalla shared that he is hopeful of that 300 million doses of the vaccine candidate ‘Covidshield’, developed by the Oxford University will be manufactured by December 2020. He also stressed that half of the vaccine produced in SII will go to India and the other half will go to other countries as there an urgent need to equally immunise the world to contain the pandemic.

When asked about the tentative prince range of the COVID-19 vaccine, Adar said that it may be too soon to comment, but they want to make the vaccine really affordable as they “don’t want to make a profit out of the pandemic.” He also highlighted that the government may set up the immunisation programs to distribute the vaccine for free amongst the masses to combat the novel coronavirus.