Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) said it has shipped Covaxin to 11 cities across India on Wednesday, a day after Serum Institute of India began its delivery of Covishield.
The two vaccines were accorded emergency use authorisation by the central drug regulator for the Covid-19 vaccination programme to commence from January 16, with healthcare and other frontline workers covered initially.
Hyderabad-based BBIL which developed the indigenous Covid-19 vaccine in PPP mode in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology, has received a government purchase order for 55 lakh doses.
BBIL officials said that 16.5 lakh Covaxin doses among this order are being extended as Bharat Biotech's “donation to the government of India.”
Covaxin is presented in multi-dose vials and can be stored at 2 to 8 degree celsius.
On Wednesday, Bharat Biotech announced “the successful air-shipment of the first batch of vaccines'' (each vial containing 20 doses) to Gannavaram (Vijayawada), Guwahati, Patna, Delhi, Kurukshetra, Bangalore, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Chennai and Lucknow.
While some shipments have arrived in respective cities, others will be delivered later on Wednesday evening, BBIL officials said.
Covaxin is a highly purified and inactivated two-dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, manufactured in a Vero cell platform.
The first indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine is presently in Phase III clinical trials, with the participation of about 26,000 volunteers across India.
According to its makers, Covaxin has shown characteristics like long term persistence of immune responses to multiple viral proteins, “as opposed to only the spike protein, and has demonstrated broad-spectrum neutralizing capability with heterologous SARS-CoV-2 strains.”