Maharashtra Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) Haffkine Biopharma, is all set to manufacture 22.8 crore doses of Covaxin vaccine under technology transfer arrangement with Bharat Biotech Ltd, according to an official statement on Wednesday issued by Ministry of Science & Technology.

With the financial aid of Centre and Maharashtra State of ₹159 crore, the production will take place at the Parel complex of the company, it further said.

“For undertaking production of Covaxin, Haffkine Biopharma has been provided with ₹65 crore grant by the Centre and Rs94 crore from the Government of Maharashtra” Sandeep Rathod, Managing Director of Haffkine BioPharma said.

“We have been given a timeline of eight months and the work is being executed on a war footing. The vaccine production process involves two stages – drug substance and final drug product. For production of drug substance we need to build a Bio Safety Level 3 (BSL 3) facility, while Haffkine already has the Fill Finish facility,” Rathod added.

Covid-19 case update

Separately, the Union Health Ministry said that India reported 1.32 lakh Covid-19 cases at 1,32,788 cases on Wednesday with 3,207 deaths in the last 24 hours. The declining trend in daily coronavirus infections is continuing, and this is the sixth consecutive day when the country reported less than two lakh cases. Cumulatively, India registered 2,83,07,832 infections, of which active cases were 17,93,645 , recovered were 2,61,79,085 and the death toll was 3,35,102.

Total recovery cases continue to outnumber the daily new cases for the 20th consecutive day, and now, the recovery rate has increased to 92.48 per cent, it said. Meanwhile, the number of tests done during the previous day stood at 20,19,773. Thus, cumulatively, 35 crore Covid tests have been conducted so far. The weekly positivity rate is currently at 8.21 per cent, while the daily positivity rate is at 6.57 per cent, less than 10 per cent for nine consecutive days.

Besides this, a total of 21.85 crore have been administered so far, with 23,97,191 vaccine doses given in the last 24 hours. In the phase 3 vaccination drive, which began on May 1 for the 18-44 age group, 2,13,73,965 beneficiaries have received the first dose; meanwhile, 39,443 beneficiaries got their second dose.

Meanwhile, the government has so far provided, both through the free of cost category and through direct state procurement category, more than 23 crore vaccine doses at 23,35,86,960 to States/UTs, of this, the total consumption, including wastages is 21,71,44,022 doses , as per its data . More than 1.64 crore Covid-19 vaccine doses at 1,64,42,938 are still available with the States/UTs to be administered, it further added.

Covid Table:

Source: Health Ministry | Till 8:00AM on Wednesday

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