The vaccine has been produced by Bharat Biotech International Limited. It is a leading global developer and manufacturer of vaccines with around seven million doses manufactured to date.
Amid the growing cases of COVID-19 and emerging variants of the highly transmissible virus, a booster dose of the vaccine has become imperative.
The vaccine is now available on COWIN and for Rs 800 for private and Rs 325 for supplies to the Government of India and State governments.
It has been specially formulated to allow intranasal delivery through nasal drops and is cost-effective in middle and low-income countries.
It is a needleless vaccine and will be the world’s first booster dose. The firm got the approval from Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation for heterologous booster doses.
iNCOVACC is a recombinant replication-deficient adenovirus vectored vaccine with a pre-fusion stabilised spike protein. The vaccine has successfully cleared three stages of the trial.
Clinical trials and extensive humoral cell radiated response were conducted to evaluate iNCOVACC as a primary dose schedule and heterogenous booster dose for people who have received the dose of the commonly administered vaccine in India.
The vaccine is stable at temperatures 2-8 degrees Celsius for easy storage and distribution.
The pharmaceutical organisation also said that despite the relatively low demands for Covid vaccines, Bharat Biotech continued product development in intranasal vaccines to be well prepared with platform technologies for future infectious diseases.
Bharat Biotech has initiated the development of variant-specific vaccines for Covid in an attempt to be future-ready.
The executive chairman of Bharat Biotech, Dr Krishna Ella said that with the rollout of the vaccine- we have achieved our goal of establishing novel vaccine delivery for intranasal delivery. It proves to the world that India can innovate for itself and the world.
She added that we and our country are well prepared for future Covid variants and infectious diseases. We reaffirm our commitment to India to lead innovation and develop novel vaccine technology to combat infectious diseases and public health globally.
She continued by saying that “we have proven these capabilities and expertise time and again with innovative vaccines such as TYPBAR, TCV, ROTAVAC, JENVAC, COVAXIN and others.”
According to Suchitra Ella, (MD), It is exemplary that India has not only served itself during the pandemic challenges but has also been a strong global provider platform in distributing vaccines and medicines to over 150 countries.
The iNCOVACC was developed in partnership with Washington University, St. Louis which had developed the recombinant adenoviral vectored construct and evaluated it in preclinical studies for efficacy.
The product development related to preclinical safety evaluation, large-scale manufacturing, formulation, delivery device development and human clinical trials were conducted by Bharat Biotech.
