Bharat Biotech on Tuesday announced that it has signed an agreement with Precisa Medicamentos for the supply of Covaxin to Brazil. The company has inked a purchase agreement with the Government of India on January 11 to provide 55 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin at Rs 295 per dose, CNBC-TV18 reported.
The Indian pharma firm will be providing its coronavirus vaccine directly to 12 states, and the process will be completed in two days by January 14. Dispatches will begin from Hyderabad starting January 12, the report said.
On Tuesday, Bharat Biotech received Emergency Use Authorisation approval from the Drug Controller General of India for its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin. The company is now set to dispatch the vaccines from Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. “Today we have received the first consignment of vaccines from Serum Institute at Hyderabad airport. We received 970 kgs of consignment (from Serum Institute).”
“Today in the evening the first consignment is going out of Hyderabad…. (it is from ) Bharat Biotech. It is going to 11 destinations,” the official told reporters after receiving the first consignment of Covishield vaccines. Covishield is developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII).
An email sent to Bharat Biotech about the delivery schedule of Covaxin evoked a “no comments” response. The vaccine programme in the country has started and the airports cargo division is gearing up to meet the demands as the city is the vaccine hub of the world, the official added.
Covaxin is being indigenously developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) – National Institute of Virology (NIV). Theindigenous, inactivated vaccineis developed and manufactured in Bharat Biotech’s BSL-3 (Bio-Safety Level 3) bio-containment facility, the firm had earlier said.