British Pharma company AstraZeneca Plc has started manufacturing the potential vaccine for Coronavirus. Company's chief executive Pascal Soriot gave this information. He said that the trial of the Coronavirus vaccine is going on but the company has started production so that it will help to meet the demand as soon as possible. In this report, Soriot said, "We have already started the production of this vaccine. By the time we get the results, we will be ready with the vaccine."
Talking in a special program of BBC, Pascal Soriot said that we have started manufacturing first so that this process can be completed very fast. He further said that this decision is a risk for us but it is a financial risk. We will be hurt only when this vaccine does not work. At that time all our material, all the vaccines will become useless. The firm announced that it had signed agreements with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, and the Serum Institute of India to double production capacity of the Covid-19 vaccine to two billion doses.
He said that in the current epidemic, we are not thinking of making a profit from this vaccine. If it works, the company will make about 2 billion doses. On Thursday itself, the company has signed two contracts, one of which is also with Bill Gates.
AstraZeneca is developing this vaccine in collaboration with scientists from Oxford University. The company has decided that half of the total vaccine will be supplied to low and medium-income countries. The company's second partner is the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's largest vaccine manufacturer in terms of volume. The company has signed a $ 750 million deal with two organizations of the Bill & Milinda Gates Foundation.
Soriot hopes to know about the effect of the AZD1222 vaccine by August. Under the agreement with the Serum Institute of India, there has been talk of providing 1 billion vaccines. AstraZeneca is now working on a supply chain to deliver the vaccine worldwide.