AHMEDABAD: The Government of India has approved Bharat Biotech’s manufacturing facility in Ankleshwar in South Gujarat for the production of Covaxin, India’s first indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine.
“Govt of India approves vaccine manufacturing facility for production of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin in Ankleshwar, Gujarat,” Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted on Tuesday.
In line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘vaccine for all and free for all’, this (move) will increase vaccine availability and accelerate the world’s largest vaccine drive, Mandaviya added in his tweet.
As part of its efforts to scale up Covaxin production capacity, Bharat Biotech in May this year had announced that it would utilize its subsidiary Chiron Behring Vaccines’ facility in Ankleshwar.
“Bharat Biotech plans to produce 200 million doses of Covaxin per annum at the Ankleshwar facility and the product availability at this plant will commence from the fourth quarter of 2021,” the company had said in May.
Bharat Biotech had acquired this Ankleshwar facility from GlaxoSmithKline Asia as part of its acquisition of Chiron Behring Vaccines.
“Since early June, manufacturing of Covaxin has commenced at our sites at Malur, Karnataka, and Ankleshwar, Gujarat, prior to which engineering batches were also executed to study equipment functionality,” Bharat Biotech recently said.
According to the company, products manufactured from these facilities will be available for supplies in September. This is based on the company’s 120-day timeline for manufacturing, testing, release, regulatory approvals and distribution.
In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha a few days ago, Mandaviya had said that the government has also facilitated the technology transfer of Covaxin production to Gujarat Covid Vaccine Consortium (GCVC). The consortium is led by the state government’s Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC).
The other members of the consortia are Hester Biosciences and OmniBRx Biotechnologies Pvt Ltd.
The minister said that the department of biotechnology under the Union ministry of science and technology has launched the Indian Covid-19 vaccine development mission. “Under the mission, facility augmentation of Bharat Biotech and one state public sector enterprise and two central public sector enterprises including Haffkine Biopharmaceutical Corporation Ltd, Mumbai, Indian Immunologicals Ltd, Hyderabad, and Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Limited, Bulandshahr, for production of Covaxin have been supported,” he said.
