Indian government-backed Covid-19 vaccine Bharat Biotech, a private company that is developing COVAXIN with the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) could be launched as early as February – months earlier than expected – as last-stage trials begin this month and studies have so far shown it is safe and effective, said a senior government scientist.
India raced ahead with work on its coronavirus vaccine while Britain’s AstraZeneca said its deliveries were running “a little bit late” as countries around the world sought to conquer the pandemic and rescue their economies.
A vaccine is seen as the world’s best bet for taming a virus that has infected more than 48 million people, led to more than 1.2 million deaths, roiled economies, and disrupted millions of lives since it was first identified in China in December.
Some 45 vaccine candidates are in human trials worldwide, with Pfizer Inc saying it could file in late November for U.S. authorization, opening up the possibility of a vaccine being available in the United States by the end of the year.
Moderna and AstraZeneca are close behind the largest U.S. drugmaker and are likely to have early data on their vaccine candidates before the end of the year.
Bharat Biotech had earlier hoped to launch it only in the second quarter of next year.
“The vaccine has shown good efficacy,” senior ICMR scientist Rajni Kant, who is also a member of its Covid-19 task force, said at the research body’s New Delhi headquarters.
“It is expected that by the beginning of next year, February or March, something would be available.”
Bharat Biotech could not immediately be contacted. A launch in February would make COVAXIN the first India-made vaccine to be rolled out.
VACCINE KEPT FROZEN
AstraZeneca has signed multiple deals to supply more than three billion doses of its candidate to countries around the world.
But a summer dip in British coronavirus infections had pushed backtest results, leading the drugmaker to delay deliveries of shots to the government.
Britain’s vaccines chief said on Wednesday it would receive just 4 million doses of the potential vaccine this year, against initial estimates for 30 million by Sept. 30.
AstraZeneca said on Thursday it was holding back deliveries while it awaits the data from late-stage clinical trials in order to maximize the shelf-life of supplies.
“We are a little bit late in deliveries, which is why the vaccine has been kept in frozen form,” CEO Pascal Soriot said on a conference call.
AstraZeneca and its partner on the project, the University of Oxford, said that data from late-stage trials should land this year.
The United States leads the world in both the number of Covid deaths and infections and the pandemic was a polarising issue in Tuesday’s presidential election in which votes were still being counted.
Among other vaccine candidates around the world, a growing number of Russians are unwilling to be inoculated once a vaccine becomes widely available, the Levada Centre, Russia’s only major independent pollster, said this week.
Russia, raising eyebrows in the West, is rolling out its “Sputnik V” vaccine for domestic use despite the fact that late-stage trials have not yet finished.