If govt permits indigenous mRNA vaccine is ready to be roll out in 72 hours: CEO Gennova

The company is ready to roll out India’s first mRNA vaccine in 72 hours after the government’s permission, said Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd Chief Executive Officer and Whole-time Director Dr Sanjay Singh. “We are ready with the vaccine, hopefully as soon as the NTAGI gives us the permission and the government gives us the way out we are able to roll out within 72 hours,” Dr Sanjay Singh told ANI.

The mRNA vaccine produced by Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd will be sold out under the brand name GEMCOVAC-19.

The company has the capacity to produce 200-300 million doses depending upon the need, Dr Singh said, “At present, we can go to 200-300 million doses, we can produce depending upon the need, but this can be scaled up because this is the advantage of this technology. You don’t need huge manufacturing plants.”

On the pricing of the vaccine, Dr Singh said that the pricing of the vaccine hasn’t been yet decided, but the “company is in conversation with the government but it has to be competitive pricing.”

The indigenous innovative mRNA vaccine can be kept under 2 to 8 degrees Celsius while most other vaccines have to be stored at sub-zero temperatures.

“Due to logistic issues, mRNA vaccines haven’t reached the neediest one. We will try to do this, we are going towards different regions Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. So, that we can’t only have vaccine supply but also have the joint manufacturing facilities in different regions,” explained Dr Singh when asked about future plans and export of vaccine.

“This vaccine is based on the second wave of the Delta variant,at present phase 3 is going on and we got very good safety and efficacy results. Out of 3000 people, less than 1 per cent of people got infected, but they were not symptomatic. This is the basic data we have against Omicron, it’s since last December and it’s changing,” he replied on being asked whether the vaccine is Omicron specific.

Witnessing the surge in COVID-19 cases and fear being circulated of a new variant, whether, this vaccine can be tweaked if a new variant comes, Dr Singh explained and said that,”mRNA vaccine can be tweaked within 50-60 days which is very fast. So once the new variant comes and if we found that variant is difficult, then we will certainly do it in a few days of time,”

On booster dose he said, “we have given our protocol to the DCGI, if it gets approved as a single dose, we have seen in our trials that single dose is useful on those who are seropositive and they have antibodies against the COVID-19.”