Hyderabad pharma firms skeptical of coronavirus vaccine Sputnik's efficacy

Hyderabad: Hyderabad is called a vaccine capital of the world and also produces one-third of global vaccine output. However, the pharma companies from the city are treading cautiously when it comes to Sputnik V, the newly registered corona vaccine by Russia.

Usually, firms enter into agreements with the vaccine developers or drug manufacturers from any part of the world to produce vaccines in a large scale to cater to people here. The same trend was seen in producing a few generic versions of Favipiravir and Remdisivir that are being tried on Covid positive patients.

However, the same zeal missing regarding the so-called first Covid vaccine as claimed by Russia.

The Russian vaccine has not gone through all testing trials that are usually done for any new vaccine and hence there are many doubts on its efficacy and safety, stated, A Sanjay Reddy, member, Telangana State Pharmacy Council. He pointed out that a majority of Russian doctors themselves stated that they would not feel comfortable to be injected with the new Covid vaccine due to lack of sufficient data about it and its super-fast approval. Data and information pertaining to phase-1 and phase-2 trials were not made public, he pointed out.

Moreover, two Hyderabad-based pharma companies Bharat Biotech and Biological E have already collaborated with research institutions to develop the corona vaccine and testing trials corresponding to those are in different stages at present.