The production of vaccines for the global war against the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, which has emerged as a new area of co-operation between India and Russia, is likely to figure at the talks between the two countries as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has arrived in New Delhi.
India is poised to become a major hub for producing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine with another Indian company, Panacea Biotec Ltd agreeing to produce 100 million doses of the vaccine annually, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which markets the shot internationally, said on Monday.
Panacea Biotec has become the fifth Indian company in the run-up to the Russian foreign minister’s visit to sign an agreement for producing the Sputnik vaccine. Three other Indian companies have signed agreements in recent weeks to roll out the vaccine. These include Virchow Biotech and Stelis Biopharma for 200 million doses each and for Gland Pharma for the manufacture of 252 million shots annually. This takes India’s total production capacity for Sputnik V to around a billion doses as Hyderabad-based Dr Reddy's Laboratories was the first Indian company to tie-up for the production and distribution of Sputnik V.
The issue of expediting approvals for the production and distribution of Sputnik V vaccine is expected to come at the talks between the Russian and Indian delegations.
Indian officials have indicated that they may approve some vaccines for emergency use authorization in the coming weeks. So far Serum Institute of India’s Oxford-AstraZeneca shots and Bharat Biotech’s home-grown Covaxin are the only two vaccines that have been approved for use in India.
All foreign vaccines have to undergo “bridge trials” in India before they can be produced for mass distribution. Dr Reddy’s Laboratories has now completed its third stage trials for Sputnik V and is lined up for the final phase of approval.
The vaccine is currently awaiting a recommendation for emergency authorization from a subject expert committee (SEC) of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization.
SEC has deferred its decision on recommending the Russian vaccine for emergency use, and asked Dr Reddy’s Laboratories to provide more data.
The SEC asked the Hyderabad-based drugmaker to submit the fact sheet for the vaccine along with details on stability, as a variant of the vaccine needs to be stored at a temperature of -18 degrees Celsius. While the liquid form requires a storage temperature of -18 degrees Celsius, the freeze-dried form can be stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius.
Russia has already tested the first samples of Sputnik V that were produced in India, its embassy in New Delhi had earlier said on Twitter, sharing a news story in which their vaccine expert Kirill Dmitriev was quoted.
“In India, we have agreements with four large manufacturers,” Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) told Rossiya 24 TV, according to news agency TASS.
Sputnik V is among the vaccines with the highest efficacy. A study published in The Lancet in February showed that the vaccine was 91.6% efficacious in preventing Covid-19.
The RDIF is the global commercialization partner of the original developer of the vaccine, Moscow’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology.
The Sputnik V vaccine involves two shots using two different human adenovirus vectors that transport the spike protein gene of the novel coronavirus to the cells. The jabs are given three weeks apart.
