Novavax Inc whose Covid-19 vaccine candidate showed promising results in the initial clinical trials has signed an exclusive supply and license agreement with India’s Serum Institute for the production of the Covid-19 vaccine in India. According to a report by news agency Reuters, apart from the exclusive production and development license of the vaccine in India, Serum institute has also struck a deal to get non-exclusive rights to produce the drug in other developing nations as well. The deal finalised between the two companies – Novavax Inc and Serum Institute will last till the time Covid-19 pandemic gets over. According to the Reuters news report, the deal was signed between the two pharma majors on July 30, days before the company told the media about the positive finding in the initial clinical trials of the vaccine.
On Tuesday, the company had said that the volunteers who had been administered the vaccine developed twice the amount of antibodies in comparison to the patients who had recovered from the disease. The positive finding had led the pharma company shares rally in the U.S. share market by up to 10 percent. The company had also said that the desired results had been achieved after two small doses of the vaccine were injected into the volunteers who participated in its clinical trials. A total of 106 volunteers between the age of 18 and 59 had been enrolled in the clinical trial conducted by the company in the month of May.
The vaccine candidate developed by Novavax Inc is one of the few promising candidates that were directly funded by the U.S government. An amount of $1.6 billion aid had also been provided to the company by the Donald Trump administration to take care of its production and clinical trial expenses. The U.S government has also struck an advance deal with the company according to which the company would supply the first batch of 100 million vaccine doses to the United States of America.
