Sputnik V vaccine: Panacea Biotec's Baddi unit gets license from DCGI to manufacture jabs

"The said batches have successfully passed all the checks for quality parameters both at the Gamaleya Center in Russia and at the Central Drug Laboratory, Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh in India," Panacea told stock exchanges on July 5.

Viswanath Pilla

July 05, 2021 / 09:40 IST

Panacea Biotec: Serum Institute of India sold 3,09,559 equity shares in company at Rs 243.32 per share on the NSE.

Panacea Biotec announced that it had received a license from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to manufacture Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 at its Baddi facility in Himachal Pradesh.

The license is a necessary condition for using Sputnik V produced by Panacea Biotec in India.

Panacea said the batches produced at Panacea Biotec’s facilities at Baddi, Himachal Pradesh were earlier shipped to the Gamaleya Center in Russia for quality control.

"The said batches have successfully passed all the checks for quality parameters both at the Gamaleya Center in Russia and at the Central Drug Laboratory, Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh in India," Panacea told stock exchanges on July 5.

Panacea is manufacturing Sputnik V in a collaboration with Russia’s sovereign wealth fund Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). RDIF has signed fixed price manufacturing contracts with half a dozen India companies including Panacea. Except for Panacea, others were manufacturing the vaccine for the first time. Dr Reddy's will be distributing the first 250 million doses that inoculate (125 million people).

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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Sputnik V vaccine: Panacea Biotec's Baddi unit gets license from DCGI to manufacture jabs

"The said batches have successfully passed all the checks for quality parameters both at the Gamaleya Center in Russia and at the Central Drug Laboratory, Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh in India," Panacea told stock exchanges on July 5.

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Sputnik V vaccine: Panacea Biotec's Baddi unit gets license from DCGI to manufacture jabs

"The said batches have successfully passed all the checks for quality parameters both at the Gamaleya Center in Russia and at the Central Drug Laboratory, Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh in India," Panacea told stock exchanges on July 5.

PB

DRL

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