The Serum Institute of India has stockpiled 40 mn-50 mn doses and is adding more every week. Most of these will come to India.
There is a process to be followed for EUL and pre-qualification of vaccines under which a company has to complete phase 3 trials and submit the whole data to the regulatory department of WHO which is examined by an expert advisory group," Swaminathan said.
An important focus of the dry run will be on management of any possible adverse events following immunisation.
In another setback to India's biggest drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, a court in Finland has prohibited it from marketing its generic version of Pfizer's cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor in the country.
On December 4 last year, the stock of the world's largest drugmaker, Pfizer, fell 10.6 per cent, wiping out more than $21 billion in market value in a single day.
The data leak obtained by 'The Australian' newspaper has revealed how the alleged CPC members are employed with some of the world's biggest corporations in the areas of defence, banks and pharmaceutical giants manufacturing coronavirus vaccines.
A longer shelf life is critical, given many makers have started manufacturing vaccines and stockpiling them, so as to make them available in the market immediately after approval, reports Sohini Das.
The vaccine would be first made available to the vulnerable population and eventually, it would be available in the private market for all.
The women who made India proud in Tokyo are set to be the Independence Day mascots. Invite from the PM has already gone out to these achievers to be guests of honour on August 15.
Vaccines Covishield and Covaxin work against SARS-CoV-2 variants Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, while effectiveness tests against the Delta Plus variant is ongoing, the government said.
The decline in the effectiveness of Covaxin, India's indigenous COVID-19 vaccine, from 77.8 per cent to 50 per cent during a Delta-driven case surge in April and May this year is neither bad nor surprising, say scientists.
The phase 3 trial is being implemented as part of Operation Warp Speed, a multi-agency collaboration led by the US Health and Human Services, which aims at accelerating the development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures for COVID-19 and delivering 300 million doses of an effective vaccine by January 2021.
As many as 721,469 appointments were made through the national booking service on Friday -- the day of the announcement -- at an average of more than eight every second. To cope with demand, the NHS said it is using stadiums and football grounds as giant vaccination centres.
Will syringe shortage puncture India's Covid vaccine plans?
Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd on Tuesday said it has decided to discontinue all its 'Valdecoxib' formulations with immediate effect from Indian markets.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said in its latest Yellow Card monitoring of the coronavirus vaccine programme this week that of the 18.1 million people who had the Oxford vaccine in the UK, 30 people developed blood clots and seven had died as of March 24.
Ranbaxy Laboratories will file an appeal against a New Jersey district court order restraining Teva Pharmaceuticals and Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals Inc from selling RPI's quinapril tablets (5, 10, 20, and 40 mg) on a challenge filed by Pfizer.
He also said that there were around 620 cases of black fungus or mucormycosis in the city, but there is a shortage of Amphotericin-B injections used in its treatment.
A technical advisory group of the UN health agency which met on Tuesday has sought "additional clarifications" from Bharat Biotech for Covaxin to conduct a final "risk-benefit assessment" for Emergency Use Listing of the vaccine.
The company has not yet revealed details about the unexplained illness but has stopped trials while doctors find out if the illness was caused due to the vaccine or was a coincidence.
China has given conditional approval for a single dose COVID-19 vaccine, touted to be a rival to Johnson & Johnson's one-jab shot cleared by the United States drug regulator on Sunday.
Bharat Biotech is in the middle of conducting a phase 3 trial with 22,000 subjects.
It is in no way a government of the economic Right. The Right is limited to religion and nationalism. The rest is as Left as the Congress or any other party, observes Shekhar Gupta.
These vaccines have not yet been approved by the World Health Organization
India's generic drug manufacturer, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, suffered a setback when a US' Court of Appeals ruled that it infringed on Pfizer Pharmaceutical company's patent for the blood pressure medicine Norvasc.
'Covid patients have infected lungs and the pollutants will further damage it.'
The government is hopeful of a speedy launch of single-dose COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik Light in India and all stakeholders, including the Russian manufacturer and its Indian partners, have been directed to fast-track the application and regulatory approval procedures for the jab to boost the country's vaccination drive, sources said.
Biocon chairperson and managing director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is in a firefighting mode, as the company she founded was forced to call off a blockbuster deal with global pharmaceutical major Pfizer.
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical major and the UK's medicines regulator said that the vaccines produced by Oxford University in collaboration with AstraZeneca to protect against COVID-19 are safe.
Last year, India's agricultural exports to the United States topped $5 billion.
Currently, the govt directly caps prices of 348 formulations at the average price of all medicines in a particular segment with at least 1% market share
The worry is that India's cavalier approach to intellectual property may catch on in other parts of the developing world
Addressing a virtual Downing Street press conference, Boris Johnson acknowledged the divided views on lifting all lockdown restrictions to declare that his update does not imply that the pandemic "is over".
'If you approached it with that level of aggression in 100 days, you would have vaccinated more than half of your country.' 'On a mass scale you will be able to eliminate that wave.'
'The Union government has discouraged state and local governments from imposing restrictions on their own.' 'That advice should be withdrawn,' asserts Mihir S Sharma.
As states grapple with a shortage of coronavirus vaccines, the Centre on Thursday said that over two billion doses will be made available in the country in five months between August and December, enough to vaccinate the entire population.
