COVID-19 Vaccine ALERT! Centre speeds up Covaxin production, provides technology to three PSUs

In order to speed up the COVID-19 vaccination process in India, the Centre is steadily ramping up domestic vaccine production. 

As part of this initiative, three public enterprises are being supported by the Department of Biotechnology under Atmanirbhar Bharat 3.0 Mission Covid Suraksha. Three PSUs Indian Immunologicals (IIL), BIBCOL and state-owned Haffkine Bio-Pharmaceutical Corporation have won the technology to produce the vaccine.

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Haffkine Biopharma, a Maharashtra state PSU, will manufacture the Covaxin vaccine under a technology transfer arrangement with Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad. The production will take place at the Parel complex of the company. 

Dr. Sandeep Rathod, Managing Director of Haffkine BioPharma said that the company proposes to produce 22.8 crore doses of Covaxin in a year. “For undertaking production of Covaxin, Haffkine Biopharma has been provided with Rs 65 crore grant by the Centre and Rs 94 crore from the Government of Maharashtra,” he added. 

“We have been given a timeline of eight months and the work is being executed on a war footing. The vaccine production process involves two stages – drug substance and final drug product. For the production of drug substance, we need to build a Bio Safety Level 3 (BSL 3) facility, while Haffkine already has the Fill Finish facility,” said Rathod, the doctor turned IAS officer. 

BSL 3 is a safety standard applicable to such facilities where work involves microbes that can cause serious disease via the inhalation route. 

"Enhancing vaccine production capacity using public sector assets will go a long way in building production capacity of vaccines in our country to support the massive vaccination drive,” said, Dr. Renu Swarup,  Secretary Department of Biotechnology and Chairperson BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council).

Haffkine Biopharmaceutical Corporation is an offshoot of the 122-year-old Haffkine Institute, which is one of the oldest biomedical research institutes in the country, named after the Russian bacteriologist Dr. Waldemar Haffkine, who invented the plague vaccine. 

As of today, the Government has provided, both through the free of cost category and through direct state procurement category, more than 24 crore vaccine doses to States/UTs. Of this, the total consumption, including wastages is 21,96,49,280 doses.

More than 2 crore COVID Vaccine doses are still available with the States/UTs to be administered.