For India, this is a great start to the new year!
SII had applied for emergency use authorisation to India’s drug regulator earlier this month. SII had submitted additional data required by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for determining the safety and immunogenicity of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
Adar Poonawalla, the company CEO, said on Monday, 28 December, that the firm is ready with a stockpile of around 40-50 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine ‘Covishield’.
He had said that once regulatory approvals come through, “it’ll be down to the government to decide how much they can take and how fast. We will be producing around 300 million doses by July 2021.”
“India is a part of COVAX. We will keep giving 50 percent of everything we make to India and to COVAX at the same time,” he said.
“Initially for the first month, we may give most of the volumes to India, because, in order to export, we have to go through the WHO pre-qualification procedure, which may…