First commercial batch of Covaxin manufactured in Ankleshwar launched

Union minister of Health and Family Welfare Mansukh Mandaviya formally launched the Covaxin batches. Dr Krishna Ella, CMD, Bharat Biotech and Suchitra Ella, joint managing director, Bharat Biotech were also present at the launch.

Hyderabad: Bharat Biotech made the commercial launch of the first batch of Covaxin from its Chiron Behring Vaccines facility in Ankleshwar, Gujarat.

Union minister of Health and Family Welfare Mansukh Mandaviya formally launched the Covaxin batches. Dr Krishna Ella, CMD, Bharat Biotech and Suchitra Ella, joint managing director, Bharat Biotech were also present at the launch.

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The company said it has already deployed multiple production lines at its Hyderabad, Malur, Bengaluru, and Pune campuses, and the addition of Chiron Behring, Ankleshwar will further augment its production capacity.

A new filing facility constructed during 2020 is now being utilised for the production of Covaxin. The vaccine production had begun in early June, before which the team had executed engineering batches to study the equipment functionality at the facility.

Chiron Behring Vaccines is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bharat Biotech.

Mansukh Mandaviya, Union minister of Health and Family Welfare, said, “India is focused on slowing the spread of Covid-19 in the country, and the key to achieving this lies in the swift and efficient administration of vaccines. We want to ensure equitable access of the vaccine to every Indian citizen, and the expansion of Covaxin production facilities by Bharat Biotech will take us closer to this goal.”

Dr Krishna Ella, CMD, Bharat Biotech, said, “We want to ensure that Bharat Biotech can ably meet the demand for Covaxin such that individuals across the country, and the globe, have access to the vaccine and can secure their health and safety. Our goal to develop a vaccine with global safety and efficacy standards has now been achieved, we are now marching towards the goal of annualised capacity of ~ 1.0 billion doses.”

Bharat Biotech is also exploring manufacturing partnerships with its partners in other countries, who have prior expertise with commercial scale manufacturing of inactivated viral vaccines under biosafety containment for further augmentation.