PremiumIndia's Covid Task Force chief Dr VK Paul on Friday said that the Centre is in talks with Johnson & Johnson regarding their single-shot vaccine, which showed promising signs of protection against the Delta variant rapidly spreading in the country.
Addressing a routine health briefing on Covid-19, Dr Paul said, "As per the plan, this vaccine will also be produced in Hyderabad's Bio E."
"Johnson & Johnson is working with Biological E. Limited on the manufacturing of the Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. We believe Biological E. will be an important part of our global Covid-19 vaccine supply network, where multiple manufacturing sites are involved in the production of our vaccine across different facilities, sometimes in different countries and continents, before the vaccine can be distributed", an official statement released by Johnson and Johnson earlier had said.
"We are working around the clock to develop and broadly activate our manufacturing capabilities to supply our Covid-19 vaccine worldwide and we appreciate the ongoing and extensive collaborations and partnerships we have with governments, health authorities and other companies to help end this pandemic", J&J had informed.
J&J's vaccine shows promising signs against Delta variant
The J&J vaccine generated strong, persistent activity against the rapidly spreading Delta variant and other highly prevalent SARS-CoV-2 viral variants, as per the company report.
In the ensemble trial, J&J's vaccine was 85% effective against severe/critical infection and demonstrated protection against hospitalisation and death.
The durability of the immune response lasted through at least eight months, the length of time evaluated to date. The two preprint study summaries have been submitted today to bioRxiv, a non-profit preprint server for the life sciences.
The single-dose Covid-19 vaccine, elicited neutralising antibody activity against the Delta variant, at an even higher level than what was recently observed for the Beta (B.1.351) variant in South Africa, the report added.
The coronavirus vaccine is now available in many countries on a not-for-profit basis during the emergency pandemic period. It received emergency use authorisation or EUA in the US on 27 February and Conditional Marketing Authorization (CMA) by the European Commission on 11 .
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