On the 15th of April, the Central Government approved the Mumbai based Haffkine Institute to produce COVAXIN, one of the vaccinations used for the Novel Coronavirus infection in India.
The Haffkine Institute is owned by the Maharashtra Government and the approval was given after the State Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the same. With this, after the Hyderabad based Bharat Biotech International Private Limited, the original producer of COVAXIN, Haffkine Institute of Mumbai would be the first to get a nod for the production.
The official announcement regarding the same was made by the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) official Twitter account. The tweet read, “The Dept of Science and Technology, Government of India, has granted approval to Haffkine Institute to produce Bharat Biotech”s COVAXIN vaccine on a transfer of technology basis.”
In another tweet, the CMO said, “CM Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray has thanked (the) Prime Minister for approving this request.”
Tha Haffkine Institute had in January sought permission from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for transfer of technology. However, no response was given by the ICMR at that time.
In March, the Haffkine Institute reiterated its request and said that if it is not granted permission to manufacture the vaccine, it can fill and finish operations of the COVID-19 vaccine, where it will only fill vaccines in bottles and make them ready for dispatch. However, once again the request went unheard without any response.
Later, the Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray wrote to PM Modi and demanded approval for producing COVAXIN.
The approval to the Haffkine Institute came at a time, when India is witnessing a massive rapid rise in COVID-19 cases. In the past month, India has been reporting a rise of 50,000 cases and in the past 10 days, the single day cases surpassed 1.50 lakhs to 2.10 lakhs. Besides the rising number of cases, many states including Punjab and Maharashtra reported vaccine shortage earlier this month.
According to reports, several beneficiaries were turned away from these states due to the shortfall of vaccine stocks. However, the Centre denied the claims of vaccine shortage and blamed the states for wasting vaccines.
