The vaccination for COVID-19 developed by the University of Oxford with the support of the British Government has been found to be effective on Monkeys and the Serum Institute of India has decided to produce it.
Six Rhesus Macaque monkeys were subjected to this vaccination and were then subjected to large doses of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. The monkeys all remained healthy after 28 days. These experiments were conducted at the National Institute of Health’s Montana facility.
The vaccine labeled as “ChAd0x1 nCOV-19 is still in phase 1 of clinical trials and is expected to produce results only in September.
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The Serum Institute of India in Pune is considered to be the world’s largest producer of vaccines.
In an interview with Reuters Adar Poonawala, the Chief Executive of the Institute when asked about the company’s mass production amidst reports of it not being proved effective yet, said: “They are a bunch of qualified, great scientist (at Oxford). That’s why we said we will go with this and that’s why we are confident”.
He added that: “we can take a little risk and sideline other commercial products and projects that I had planned this year”.
Up to 60 million doses of this vaccine will be produced. Most of this is expected to be sold at Rs 1000/dose and the government may further subsidize this.
Poonawala also said that the Prime Minister’s Office is in touch with the institute and is expected to take a final call on the distribution of the vaccines to different nations.