India’s hopes to administer two billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines between August and December have received a boost with a new US-made vaccine to be produced in India by the Serum Institute showing high protective efficacy.
The US-based vaccine maker Novavax announced that its protein-based Covid-19 vaccine has demonstrated 90.4 per cent efficacy against the novel coronavirus infection and 100 per cent efficacy against moderate and severe disease.
“Today, Novavax is one step closer to addressing the critical and persistent global health need for additional Covid-19 vaccines,” Stanley Erck, chief executive officer of Novavax, said in a statement. “These results reinforce that the vaccine is extremely effective and offers complete protection against both moderate and severe Covid-19 infection.”
The Centre has said it expects to procure 200 million doses of the Novavax vaccine from the Serum Institute between August and December this year as part of a plan to acquire and administer over two billion doses during those five months.
The Pune-based Serum Institute of India is expected to produce 1 billion doses of the Novavax vaccine during 2021 under a pact between the two companies last September. Novavax, which also has partner manufacturing sites in the Czech Republic, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the US, has said it will have a global production capacity of over 2 billion doses during 2021.
