Hyderabad: Vaccine maker Bharat Biotech's intranasal vaccine for covid-19, the first in the world, is scheduled to be introduced in the country as a booster dose shortly. The vaccine, iNCOVACC (BBV154), is now available on CoWin, and priced at Rs800 for private markets and Rs325 for supplies to the Centre and state governments, the Hyderabad-based company said.
Last last month, Bharat Biotech received approval from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) for the use of heterologous booster doses of iNCOVACC.
This vaccine candidate was evaluated in phases I, II and III clinical trials, the company said.
The vaccine has been specifically formulated to allow delivery through nasal drops. The nasal delivery system has been designed and developed to be cost-effective in low- and middle-income countries, it said.
“We have achieved the goals we set for ourselves during this pandemic. We have developed Covaxin and iNCOVACC, two covid vaccines from two different platforms, with two different delivery systems. The vectored intranasal delivery platform gives us the capability for rapid product development, scale-up, easy and painless immunization during public health emergencies and pandemics,” said Bharat Biotech executive chairman Krishna Ella.
As a needle-less vaccination, iNCOVACC will be India’s first such booster dose.
India will now have more options when it comes to third doses or precautionary doses.
The vaccine’s manufacturing platform has the double benefit of enabling faster development of variant-specific vaccines and easy nasal delivery that enables mass immunization to protect from emerging variants of concern, the company said.
The vaccine was developed in partnership with Washington University, St. Louis. Product development related to preclinical safety evaluation, large-scale manufacturing scale-up, formulation and delivery device development, including human clinical trials were conducted by Bharat Biotech. Product development and clinical trials were funded in part by the Government of India, through the Department of Biotechnology's, Covid Suraksha Programme.
