Wockhardt signs pact with Russian co to make 620 mn Sputnik doses in 2 yrs

This is twice the amount of doses Serum Institute of will make of the Russian shot, will take total Sputnik V capacity in India to 1.7 bn doses a year

Mumbai-headquartered drug maker Wockhardt has entered into an agreement with Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) arm Enso Healthcare to make 620 million doses of the Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines over the next two years.

This is twice the amount of doses Serum Institute of India (SII) will make of the Russian vaccine, and cumulatively will take the Sputnik V manufacturing capacity in India to 1.7 billion doses annually. However, so far RDIF’s partner in India Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL) has been importing the vaccine, and locally manufactured doses are yet to be available.

On Friday Wockhardt said it has partnered with RDIF to make the Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines, and the agreement was reached under the aegis of Enso Healthcare (part of Enso Group), RDIF's coordination partner for sourcing Sputnik V vaccines in India.

The term of the manufacturing contract is upto June 2023 for making upto 620 million doses of Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines. Wockhardt said in a stock-exchange notification that according to the agreement, 70-120 million injection doses will be contract manufactured till June 30, 2022 and thereafter the contract may be extended to June 30, 2023 for a further 500 million doses. This is subject to ‘certain conditions’, Wockhardt said.

Sputnik V is a heterogeneous vaccine which uses two different human adenoviruses in the two doses. Sputnik Light is the first dose component of Sputnik V, which uses human adenovirus Ad26.

Habil Khorakiwala, Founder Chairman of Wockhardt Group, said: “We are delighted to partner with RDIF to make a substantial contribution towards providing global supply of the Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines which is one of the most efficacious approved vaccines commercially available.”

To date, the Sputnik V vaccine has been registered in 69 countries globally with a total population of over 3.7 billion people. In particular, Sputnik V demonstrates 83.1 per cent efficacy against the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Sputnik V is also 94.4 per cent effective against hospitalisations with 18 times reduction in hospitalisation risk, the statement claimed.

Sputnik V’s production in India got a shot in the arm when Pune-based SII got into a partnership to make more than 300 million doses of the jab here. SII’s production is expected to start in September.

As Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive officer (CEO), RDIF has pointed out, SII will be in a position to produce the mix-and-match dose combination of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine and Sputnik V.

Trial of mix-and-match vaccines in Azerbaijan is expected to be over soon. Human trials of a Covid vaccine combining the AstraZeneca-Oxford shot with Sputnik V had been approved in Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates, and Belarus. The Azerbaijan trials had begun around March this year.

SII is already making Covishield, the AstraZeneca vaccine. Once approved, SII will be in a position to manufacture the combination-dose vaccine of the Sputnik V and AstraZeneca too, and it can also make the booster shots.

India is the leading production hub for the production of the Sputnik vaccine. The RDIF had earlier reached agreements with a number of pharmaceutical companies in India (Gland Pharma, Hetero Biopharma, Panacea Biotec, Stelis Biopharma, Virchow Biotech, and Morepen) for the production of the Russian vaccine — more than 850 million doses per year. Around 250 million doses are planned for India at the moment.

The first consignment of the imported doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, which landed in India on May 1, received regulatory clearance from the Central Drugs Laboratory in Kasauli on May 13.

The imported doses of the vaccine are currently priced at a maximum retail price of Rs 948 plus 5 percent goods and services tax per dose.