India’s Cadila Aims to Supply Up to 150 Million Vaccine Doses

A health worker holds a syringe while testing the vaccination process during a trial of a Covid-19 vaccine delivery system at the Northern Railway Central Hospital in New Delhi, India, on Friday, Jan. 8, 2021. India plans to inoculate 30 million frontline workers in the first phase of vaccinations, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said in a tweet last week.

(Bloomberg) -- Cadila Healthcare Ltd., an Indian drugmaker working to develop an indigenous coronavirus vaccine, said it expects to supply between 100 million to 150 million doses of its candidate this year.

The Ahmedabad-based firm’s ZyCoV-D vaccine was approved to commence with final stage human trials in December, and it is recruiting 30,000 volunteers for its phase 3 tests, according to a presentation filed with India’s stock exchanges on Tuesday. Cadila’s plasmid DNA candidate doesn’t use an infectious agent, like other vaccines, and instead introduces the DNA sequence encoding the antigen.

India is preparing to launch its coronavirus inoculation campaign on Jan. 16 with the aim of stemming the spread of the disease that has already infected more than 10 million people in the country. India’s drug regulator granted emergency approval for two vaccines shortly after new year’s day -- one from AstraZeneca Plc as well as a locally-developed one from Bharat Biotech International Ltd. -- despite a lack of final test efficacy data from the latter, which has prompted widespread criticism from scientists and public health experts.