Bharat Biotech to ramp up production of Covaxin to 100-120 mn doses by July

With ramping up of production capacities, nearly 25 crore 'Made in India' vaccines are expected to be available by August, a senior official has said and noted that it will go a long way in meeting the target of vaccinating one crore people daily against COVID-19.

There has been shortage of vaccines after it was decided to open up vaccination to all those above 18 years.

"Yesterday, SII in a letter mentioned that they will be manufacturing 10-12 crore of vaccine doses, which is almost 50 per cent ramping up (of their capacity) by June-end. Similarly, Covaxin is also going to increase its production and by July-end they will also produce between 10-12 crore doses (per month)," said Dr N K Arora, Chairman of COVID-19 working group under National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI).

Pune-based SII (Serum Institute of India) manufactures Covishield vaccine against COVID-19 while Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech manufactures Covaxin.

"By August we will have 20-25 crore vaccine doses per month, another 5-6 crore doses from other manufacturing units or if we get international vaccine doses. The objective is to vaccinate one crore people every day," Dr Arora said.

He said India may start in few weeks testing the feasibility of a regimen "that mixes two different doses of COVID vaccines to see if it helps boost the immune response to virus". The researchers in such a study would see the effects of giving a different vaccine in the second dose.

At present, the country has availability of 7-7.5 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin per month.

India's daily COVID-19 cases continue to decline and 1,52,734 new infections were recorded in the last 24 hours, the lowest in 46 days.