Bharat Biotech International Limited on Tuesday said its intranasal COVID-19 vaccine iNCOVACC, now available on the Cowin portal, is priced at ₹800 (excluding GST) for private markets and ₹325 (excluding GST) for government supply.
A press release from the vaccine manufacturer stated that the vaccination will be launched in the fourth week of January 2023.
iNCOVACC is the world’s first intranasal vaccine for COVID to receive approval for a primary two-dose schedule and as a heterologous booster.
Earlier this month, Bharat Biotech received approval from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) for the use of heterologous booster doses of iNCOVACC.
Krishna Ella, executive chairman of BBIL, said: “We have developed Covaxin and iNCOVACC, two vaccines against COVID from two different platforms, with two different delivery systems.
The vector intranasal delivery platform gives us the ability to rapidly develop products, scale up, easy and painless immunization during emergencies public health events and pandemics.”
Phase III studies with iNCOVACC (as a two-dose regimen) were conducted for safety, and immunogenicity in approximately 3,100 subjects at 14 test sites across India, while heterologous booster dose studies were conducted for safety and immunogenicity in 875 subjects, the report further stated.
iNCOVACC was developed in collaboration with Washington University, St Louis, which designed and developed the recombinant adenoviral vector construct and evaluated its efficacy in preclinical studies.