(Reuters) – American drug developer Novavax Inc. said on Tuesday it was doubling its potential COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity to two billion annually, under an agreement with Serum Institute of India, sending its shares nearly 7% Has been
In August, Novavax signed an agreement with Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine, to produce a minimum of one billion doses of its vaccine candidate for low- and middle-income countries and India.
As part of the expanded agreement, Serum Institute NVX will also manufacture the antigen component of the CoV2373 dubbed vaccine, which Novavax said will bring its manufacturing capacity to more than two billion doses by mid-2021.
The Novavax vaccine is currently in mid-stage trials because early-stage studies showed that it produced high levels of antibodies against novel coronaviruses. The company plans to start late-stage trials in the third quarter.
Last month, Novavax said it would supply 60 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine candidate in the UK in the first quarter of 2021.
The company is preparing to deliver 100 million doses to the United States by January, as $ 1.6 billion was awarded for its potential vaccine, and has also signed supply agreements with Canada and Japan.
Other drug makers such as Pfizer Inc. and Modern Inc. have already begun large-scale studies of their experimental vaccines.
Reporting by Aakriti Bhalla and Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumya Dev Chakraborty and Shinjini Ganguly
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