What sets Zydus Cadila apart among indigenous players in Covid vaccine race

The company says the stability of the vaccine is one of its biggest advantages amid dry runs of mass vaccination programmes being conducted in some states

Behind Cadila Healthcare’s drive to develop a Covid vaccine, there lies an antecedent.

The firm, also known as Zydus Cadila, became the first Indian entity in May 2010 to get the regulator’s nod to market the indigenous H1N1 (swine) flu vaccine.

Marketed under the brand VaxiFlu-S by Vaxxicare, a division of the group focusing on preventives, the vaccine was an egg-based, inactivated one, based on conventional technology that paved the way for work on a wide spectrum of inoculations against bacterial, viral, and protozoal infections.

It was this pioneering work a decade ago that laid the foundation of one of the country’s slow