Zydus Cadila starts supplies of Covid vaccine to govt

Zydus Cadila on Wednesday announced that the company had started supplies of its Covid-19 vaccine, ZyCoV-D, to the Government of India. The group is also planning to make the vaccine available in the private market.

The first consignment of its Covid-19 vaccine was supplied against the government order from the newly-commissioned Zydus Vaccine Technology Excellence Centre at the Zydus Biotech Park in Ahmedabad. The vaccine will be priced at Rs 265 per dose and the applicator being offered at Rs 93 per dose excluding taxes. The vaccine is a three-dose one administered intradermally using the painless PharmaJet, a needle-free system, Tropis, on Day 0, Day 28 and Day 56.

Zydus said it had also entered into a definitive agreement with Shilpa Medicare Limited, a contract-manufacturing organisation to produce doses of ZyCoV-D. The company also entered into an agreement with Enzychem Lifesciences from Republic of Korea for the manufacturing license and technology transfer for the Plasmid DNA Vaccine.

ZyCoV-D is a Plasmid DNA vaccine, which when administered produces the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and elicits an immune response mediated by the cellular and humoral arms of the human immune system, which play a vital role in protection from disease as well as viral clearance.