New Delhi: India has done better than any country in the world with respect to the affordability and reach of the people of Covid-19 vaccines, Chairman of Bharat Biotech and Managing Director Krishna Ella said on Sunday.
In his independence day speech from the Red Fort fortress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India was proud to have the largest vaccination program in the world, and more than 54 crore people had taken the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Prime Minister also praised those involved in making vaccines in the country and said India did not have to depend on the outside world for a vaccine against Coronavirus.
Highlighting phlegm from vaccination tasks, Ella said, “When you have 1.3 billion people to be given a vaccine in a certain period of time, it is challenging.” The US has more vaccines than India, but only 16 crore people are vaccinated.
“In India, I am proud to say that we have done a good job,” he added.
“We have done better in terms of affordability and reach to people.
We have done better than any country in the world,” Ella said at the present India at 75: Summit freedom.
About Bharat Biotech’s contributions and efforts in connection with vaccination efforts, Ella said that apart from Covaxin, the company has also developed intranasal vaccines for Covid-19.
“We are working on a covaxin combination followed by the nose, so the covaxin is a default immunity system and then encouraging by the nose that produces three immune responses – IGG, ribs and then mucosal immunity,” he said.
The three immunity is strong and can protect someone to be infected, he added.
“We may, in the next two months, a lot of data coming out of it.
So, we are working on it not only this but also a booster dose of Covaxin,” Ella said.
Asked whether the third dose needed, Ella answered affirmatively and said, “Yes, we will provide data to the government, for the government to make decisions with the supervisor agent but we certainly work on the nose to enter together with this.
If the nose works very well, Our production capacity multiplied.
This is what we expect.
“The first nose vaccine against Covid-19, developed by Bharat Biotech, has received a nod of regulators to conduct clinical testing phase-2, the Biotechnology Department (DBT) said on Friday.
“Intrasal vaccine Bharat Biotech is the first nose vaccine that has received regulatory approval for phase-2 trials,” DBT said in a statement.
Phase-1 clinical trials have been completed in the age group ranging from 18 to 60 years, it has been added.
BBV154 is a chimpanzee vaccine that lacks intranasal replication adenovirus sars-cov-2.
Earlier on August 6, Minister of Chemistry and Mansukh Mandaviya fertilizer said in a written reply to questions at Rajya Sabha that the addition of Bharat Biotech facilities and three public sector companies were supported to increase the production of Covid-19 covaxin vaccines.