Indians Will Have Free COVID-19 Shots In 73 Days, Said Report

India is about to have its first Coronavirus vaccine. Oxford University’s Covishield vaccine candidate is set to be commercialized within 73 days, said an official at the Serum Institute of India.

Under the NIP (short for National Immunisation Program), all Indians will be vaccinated for free, as is the case with other vaccines under the same program.

The Serum Institute of Indian will handle phase II trials of the Covishield. According to a source familiar with the matter, this vaccine will likely be the first to be produced in India.

As stated by a top official at Serum Institute India, the Indian government has issued a special manufacturing priority license to the biotech company and accelerated the trial protocol processes for the trials to be completed in 58 days.

The first dosing took place last Saturday and the second will occur after 29 days. 15 days from the second dosing, the final trial report will be made public. The official said by that time, the vaccine would be commercialized.

On August 22, phase III trials took place at 20 centers across India, mostly in Maharashtra and Gujarat. The Covishield was given to 1,600 people at this stage.

According to Business Today, The Serum Institute will own the vaccine. The biotech company has an exclusive agreement with Astra Zeneca and has brought the rights and paid the royalty fee for the right to exclusively distribute the Covishield in India and some other countries.

On Saturday, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Health Minister said if everything went according to plan, India would have a vaccine against COVID-19 by the end of the year.

He said we now had 26 vaccine candidates in the clinical trial phase. There are 126 other candidates at pre-clinical trials and at different stages of development.

Dr. Harsh Vardhan shared that India’s vaccine candidates, about half a dozen to be precise, were a little more progress than their counterparts in other countries. Among them, three candidates are now in the first, second, and third phases.

He said as they analyzed the progress, they were confident that the trials were to be completed this year and the results would be made public.

He assured that right after an effective vaccine becomes available in India, manufacturing would take place immediately.

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