Hyderabad: Even as India’s first indigenous coronavirus vaccine Covaxin is entering its third phase of human trials, Bharat Biotech on Monday raised the logistical query on how to vaccinate 1.3 billion (130 crore) people with two injectable doses. Terming the exercise a challenge it also said that work was on single-dose nasal drop vaccine.
Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) Chairman and Managing Director Krishna Ella said the company’s Bio-Safety Level 3 (BSL-3) facility currently has limited capacity but hoped to reach one billion (100 crore) doses by next year.
We have partnered with ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) for Covaxin and as we speak, we are entering phase III trials but I am not happy because it is a two-dose injectable vaccine. If we have to vaccinate 1.3 billion population with two dose vaccine, we need 2.6 billion (260 crore) syringes and needles, he said.
Ella was addressing Deccan Dialogue organised by the Indian School of Business (ISB) and supported by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on ‘Crisis and cooperation: Imperative in the times of pandemic’.
We are working on another vaccine, a single dose nasal drop. We have experience of making Rotavirus and Polio nasal drop vaccines. We can scale up to 1 billion doses and my feeling is that by next year we will reach there, he said.
The Hyderabad-headquartered vaccine maker announced in September that it is collaborating with the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri to manufacture a billion doses of a single-dose intranasal vaccine.
The challenge is to vaccinate 1.3 billion population. Six billion (600 crore) people in the developing world have to be vaccinated but the opportunity is if 20 per cent of them are vaccinated, I have done my job as a scientist. You partly need vaccine because there will be herd immunity, he added.