The speculations around an approaching Coronavirus immunization has raised many expectations among billions influenced by the pandemic around the globe, said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson and MD of Bengaluru-based Biocon Ltd.
Mazumdar-Shaw is confident that the vaccine will be out in India by June, however added conveying the vaccine’s distribution to India’s 1.2 billion population has its own difficulties.
“I anticipate that by January, some of the other vaccines could be approved like AstraZeneca’s or one of our own Indian vaccines like the one by Bharat Biotech. If we complete the clinical trials in the next 2-3 months, even those may be approved by January-February. So I would expect that in Q1FY22 we are keen to see vaccines available in India and other parts of the world,” Kiran said.
The Biocon chairperson is keen that the first mRNA vaccines will be granted approval by the end of the year. She added that it requires a lot of employees that include nurses, doctors, MBBS students for hassle free production of the vaccine.
It is learnt that apart from human resources, India has to acquire infrastructure for cold chains to be framed efficiently. Also, it is an intramuscular injection inoculation that has to been given twice (one month apart), which causes a lot of complexity.