India's Biological E. will produce the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in India, the company announced on Tuesday, 18 May.
This comes hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a conference with officials from different districts across the country and assured continuous efforts to ‘boost vaccine supply in a big way.’
Biological E. is looking to contract-manufacture about 600 million doses of the J&J vaccine annually.
J&J confirmed the same and stated that this will be an important part of the global COVID-19 vaccine supply network and will boost supplies in the country that is facing acute vaccine shortage.
Biological E., based in Telangana’s Hyderabad, plans to produce 75 million to 80 million doses of its own vaccine, a month from August.
In April, the US pharma company said it is in discussion with the Indian government to soon begin bridging clinical trials in the country for its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine Janssen.
The company has developed its own Janssen COVID-19 vaccine with Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and Dynavax Technologies Corp and received approval from India's drug regulator late April to conduct a Phase III clinical trial.
This could apply for emergency use authorisation (EUA) based on government advice. It is currently approved for use in the United States, the European Union and other nations, including Thailand and South Africa. The United States is expected to finance the production of at least 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2022, said the media report.
“India contributes to more than 60 percent of the global vaccine supply and is well positioned to play a key role in supporting large-scale vaccine production to combat the global pandemic. We are confident that Biological E’s strong vaccine manufacturing experience will assist in the rapid production of a vaccine leveraging Janssen’s proven AdVac® technology beginning in 2021, following approvals from regulators,” J&J said in a statement.
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