BackWockhardt signs pact with UK govt to fill finish covid vaccines at North Wales plant
As per the agreement, Wockhardt will fill finish the vaccines in vials after it receives the bulk products from the company manufacturing successful vaccines
PremiumNEW DELHI : Wockhardt Ltd has entered into an agreement with the UK government to fill and finish covid-19 vaccines vials at its subsidiary CP Pharmaceuticals’ facility based in Wrexham, North Wales.
As per the agreement, Wockhardt will fill finish the vaccines in vials after it receives the bulk products from the company manufacturing successful vaccines, chairman Habil Khorakiwala said at a press conference on Monday.
Khorakiwala said he is also in talks with the Indian government to offer its fill finish capacity for the covid-19 vaccines that will be developed in the country, as well as with some firms whose vaccines are currently in phase I/II trials globally.
"We have been in touch with the scientific advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office, Mr K. Vijay Raghavan, and we are in communication with him. We have a covid task force for this very purpose," Khorakiwala said, adding they the company would be offering its finishing capacity to companies who are manufacturing it in bulk but do not have adequate capacity to fill it in the vials.
Khorakiwala said that the company has a capacity to fill finish 400 million doses of the vaccine annually at its UK plant, with an additional 600-million dose capacity at its plant in Aurangabad in Maharashtra.
The potential candidates th Mumbai-based drugmaker will fill finish at its North Wales plant also include the vaccine candidate AZD1222, which is co-invented by the University of Oxford and its spinout company, Vaccitech and licensed by AstraZeneca.
In June, Astrazeneca had signed an agreement with Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses produced and sold, globally, to supply an additional 1 billion doses, principally for low- and middle-income countries. However, Wockhardt’s pact will not cover the vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute and is only for the candidates in the UK.
Other candidates being developed in the UK are by the Imperial College in London and the joint venture by GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur.
The UK government has also secured pacts for supply of 90 million doses total of two possible covid-19 vaccines being developed by the alliance of Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, and the French firm Valneva.
Some of the over two dozen candidates undergoing human trials include those by Moderna, Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutical, China’s Sinovac, US-based Novovax and University of Queensland. In India, Zydus Cadila and Bharat Biotech International Ltd are conducting human trials of their vaccine candidates.
Experts say filling and finishing of vials would be a major bottleneck for vaccine production once a successful vaccine is available.
“Actually the challenge itself is not to make the vaccine itself but to fill vials, which sounds a little bit silly but that’s what it is. There is not enough vials in the world... So we are looking at producing more doses with limited number of glass vials," Astrazeneca executive director and chief executive officer Pascal Soirot had said at a press conference in May.
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