A vaccine for coronavirus may be available in the market as early as the end of September, the chief of the world’s largest vaccine maker has told the popular news channel, NDTV.
The cost, he said, would be roughly around Rs 1,000. “That’s what we hope to do by the end of May- we hope to start producing this vaccine so that by the time the trials get over in September, we could have a product that we can give to the Indian people and the world and not have to wait another 6 months after that to manufacture the vaccine,” Adar Poonawalla, the chief of Serum Institute of India, told NDTV on Monday.
The Pune-based Serum Institute of India is working with scientists in the UK and the US to manufacture a vaccine for the global pandemic that has infected more than 3 million people and cost 209,661 lives.
Most scientists have said a vaccine is not expected in the market before two years or a minimum of 18 months. Asked about the short time frame, Mr Poonawalla said they were also expecting a longer incubation period till they tied up with scientists at the Oxford University.
“We have ourselves said that it (vaccine production) will take till 2021 with Codagenix and other US partners But what happened after that was that about a week ago, we were able to tie up with Oxford University which has progressed a lot and entered human beings,” he told NDTV.
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