Cadila Healthcare Ltd (Zydus Cadila) on Monday said that it has received an order to supply one crore doses of ZyCoV-D, the world’s first Plasmid DNA Vaccine to the Government of India.
Decided in consultation with the Government of India, Zydus has priced the vaccine at Rs 265 per dose and the needle-free applicator being offered at Rs 93 per dose, excluding GST.
"We are happy to support the Government’s vaccination programme with ZyCoV-D. The needle-free application of the vaccination, we hope, will motivate many more to vaccinate and safeguard themselves from Covid-19, especially children and young adults in the age group of 12-18 years," said managing director of the company, Sharvil Patel.
ZyCoV-D is the first DNA plasmid vaccine in the world for human use, developed indigenously by the company against the Covid-19 virus. It is also the first Covid-19 vaccine which is needle-free and administered using The PharmaJet, a needle-free applicator to ensure painless intradermal vaccine delivery which also leads to a significant reduction in any kind of major side effects.
According to the company, the vaccine has shown good stability at temperatures of around 25 degrees for at least three months. The thermostability of the vaccine will help in easy transportation and storage of the vaccine without any problems of fluctuations in temperature. For prolonged use, a temperature of 2-8 degrees is sufficient.
Also being a DNA plasmid vaccine, ZyCoV-D doesn’t have any problem associated with vector based immunity. The DNA Plasmid platform allows generating new construct quickly to deal with mutations in the virus.
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