Govt approves Bharat Biotech's Ankleshwar plant for manufacturing Covaxin

HYDERABAD: Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Tuesday said the government has approved Bharat Biotech’s vaccine manufacturing facility at Ankleshwar in Gujarat for manufacturing India’s first indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin.
The minister said the move will help ramp up availability of the indigenous vaccine for the national vaccination drive.
“Govt of India approves vaccine manufacturing facility for production of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin in Ankleshware, Gujarat,” Mandaviya tweeted.
“Following PM Narendra Modiji’s vision of SabkoVacccineMuftVaccine, this will increase vaccine availability & accelerate the world’s largest vaccine drive,” the health minister said.
Bharat Biotech had, in May this year, announced its plans to repurpose the Ankleshwar BSL2+ facility, that makes rabies vaccines, for manufacturing 200 million doses per annum of Covaxin. The supply of vaccines from the Ankleshwar facility will be available from September, the company had said recently.
Bharat Biotech had said that it commenced manufacturing Covaxin at Ankleshwar and the Malur unit near Bengaluru from early June, prior to which it executed engineering batches to study the equipment functionality.
The facility at Ankleshwar was acquired by Bharat Biotech in early 2019 from GlaxoSmithKline Asia as part of its acquisition of Chiron Behring Vaccines Pvt Ltd.