Serum Institute Of India To Soon Circulate Candidate Vaccines At $3 Per Dose In India And Neighboring Poor Countries
AstraZeneca and Novavax candidate vaccines to be priced at $3 per dose and soon to be commercialized in all the poor countries by the end of 2021, with GAVI's financial support, from SII.
The Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, was elected as the Chairperson of World Health Organization's (WHO) Executive Board on 22nd May 2020. Since then, India has been working fast on grounds of medical innovations in the risky environment of Coronavirus. The Serum Institute of India's recent breakthrough is a proof of that.
Serum Institute of India (SII)on friday said that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will provide risk finance of $150 million to manufacture 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines at $3 per dose charge by the Pune based company. The company would get the funding from Gates Foundation through International vaccine alliance GAVI.
The drugmaker said, "The funding will support at-risk manufacturing by SII for candidate vaccines from AstraZeneca and Novavax". If the companies are successful in acquiring full license and prequalification from World Health Organization then it will be available in the market of the developing countries at a low rate.
Novavax Inc. said on Wednesday, 5th August, that it has signed up for an agreement and license with Serum Institute of India (SII) for the development and commercialization of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate. The vaccine is to set foot on 92 countries in GAVI's COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), disclosed the company in a statement.
GAVI, with the support of Gates Foundation, is a public-private global health partnership with the outlook of increasing immunization access in third world countries or poor countries. COVAX has a goal of delivering two billion doses of effective and approved Covid-19 vaccines by the end of 2021.
The Gates Foundation will be providing the funds to GAVI's headquarters and that will be used to support the venture from Serum Institute of India. On Friday, 7th of August, India has recorded a huge jump of record number of cases and is right now the third country lagging behind of only US and Brazil by surpassing 2 million cases.
