Following on an approval from the USFDA, Gaithersburg, Maryland-based biotechnology company Novavax said that its Covid-19 vaccine Nuvaxovid for adults will be manufactured by its partner Serum Institute of India. (SII)
“It is the first vaccine from India to be approved by the USFDA,” Serum Institute’s CEO Adar Poonawalla, said.
The Novavax Covid-19 vaccine is administered as a two-dose primary series, three weeks apart. The U.S. government has bought 3.2 million doses of this vaccine. In India, the same vaccine is branded as Covovax.
Chief Medical Officer of Novavax, Filip Dubovsky, said that all vaccines that are commercially distributed globally are made in a single facility by their partners, the Serum Institute of India. This includes the vaccines, which are being deployed around the world as well as the ones that will be initially deployed in the U.S.
SII and Novavax are working on an Omicron variant-specific vaccine for Covid-19 that will be different from the original shot developed using the Wuhan strain of the Sars-CoV-2 virus.