SII manufacturing first batch of Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine Covovax, says Adar Poonawalla

Pune: The first batch of Covovax, a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Novavax Inc, is being manufactured at the Serum Institute of India’s Pune facility, SII CEO Adar Poonawalla said on Friday.

In March this year, he had said that the clinical trials of Covovax vaccine have begun in India and the company hopes to launch it by September this year. In August 2020, American vaccine company Novavax Inc had announced a licence agreement with SII for the development and commercialisation of NVX-CoV2373, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, in low and middle-income countries and India. In January this year, the Serum Institute had rolled out Covishield vaccine in the country. It had entered into a collaboration with the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca to manufacture the vaccine.