Major vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India on Sunday said that it was planning to commence the production of the vaccine developed by Oxford University.
As per reports, the company is also planning to launch the COVID-19 vaccine in the market by October if human trials are conducted successfully.
Serum Institute of India has partnered with the prestigious university as one of the seven global institutions manufacturing the vaccine.
The company’s CEO Adar Poonawalla said that its team is working closely with Oxford University for successful production of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Our team has been working closely with Dr Hill from Oxford University, and we are expecting to initiate production of the vaccine in 2-3 weeks and produce 5 million doses per month for the first 6 months, following which, we hope to scale up production to 10 million doses per month,” Poonawalla said.
The potential COVID-19 vaccine which was developed at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute is an adenovirus vaccine vector (ChAdOx1).
“It was chosen as the most suitable vaccine technology for a SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vaccine as it can generate a strong immune response from one dose and it is not a replicating virus, so it cannot cause an ongoing infection in the vaccinated individual,” the university had said in a statement earlier.
The university also stated that the potential vaccine is safer to give to children, the elderly and anyone with a pre-existing condition such as diabetes.
“ Adenoviral vectors are a very well-studied vaccine type, having been used safely in thousands of subjects, from 1 week to 90 years of age, in vaccines targeting over 10 different diseases,” it added.