Counting on you for expanded jab drive: PM to vaccine makers

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 20

A day after announcing a liberalised Covid-19 vaccine policy to cover all adults starting May 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday urged vaccine makers to scale up production in the shortest possible time and assured them support with approvals and logistics.

In a virtual interaction with the heads of Serum Institute of India, Biological E, Gennova, Bharat Biotech, Dr Reddy’s, Zydus Cadila, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the vaccine makers for developing Covid jabs in record time and said, “Believing in the ability of our vaccine manufacturers, the government has now allowed the vaccination programme for every adult starting May 1.”

The PM urged industry leaders to ramp up manufacturing and vaccinate people in the shortest possible time while appreciating the efforts and studies being conducted by scientists in the development of new vaccines.

He noted that vaccines manufactured in India were the cheapest, saying the world’s largest vaccine programme was under way in India.

Throughout the process of developing and manufacturing vaccines, the country had constantly worked with the spirit of public-private partnership under the ‘Mission Covid Suraksha’ and created an end-to-end vaccine development ecosystem, the PM said.

“The government ensured that all vaccine manufacturers not only get all possible help and logistic support, but also the process of vaccine approval is speedy and scientific,” the PM said, assuring support and smooth approval process for the vaccine candidates which are currently in a trial phase.

The PM said health infrastructure of the private sector had played a big role in the country’s fight against Covid-19 and in the coming days would play a greater role in the vaccination drive.

“This will require better coordination between hospitals and industry,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bharat Biotech today announced to scale up its manufacturing capacity to produce 700 million doses of Covaxin annually. Its current production capacity is 1.6 lakh doses a day.

Manufacturing scale-up will happen in a step-wise manner across multiple facilities in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, the firm said.

J&J applies for covid vax import licence

Johnson & Johnson has applied to the Drug Controller General of India for licence to import Covid vaccine and also undertake Phase 3 bridging trials post approval. The application follows flexibility to foreign jab makers to apply for import licences after the govt waived off pre-approval bridging trial requirement for them before grant of emergency use approval for the vaccines approved by US FDA, and regulators of UK, EU and Japan.

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