On Wednesday, the British cell therapy firm announced that Vaccine producer Serum Institute of India will invest 50 million pounds ($68.24 million) in Oxford Biomedica. It is one of the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers for drug major company, AstraZeneca. This amount will be used to fund the development of the fallow area at Oxbox.
Oxford Biomedica owns the 84,000 square feet of a manufacturing facility that will be turner into a flexible advanced manufacturing space. Also, it is expected that the validation of several independent cgmps will come online in 2023. On Wednesday, the U.K government qualifies the recognition of the Covishield vaccine in its new travel rules. The Covishield vaccine is developed and designed by the combined efforts of Oxford University and the UK based AstraZeneca.
Earlier, the UK government described fully vaccinated Indians as unvaccinated to which India strongly criticised and indicated their right to take reciprocal action.
“Covishield is a licensed product of a UK company manufactured in India. We have supplied 5 million doses of Covishield to the UK at its request. Therefore, non-recognition of Covishield is a discriminatory policy and impacts those citizens travelling to the UK,” Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Tuesday as quoted by Business Standard.
COVID19 | In its revised travel advisory, the UK government says Covishield qualifies as an approved vaccine pic.twitter.com/B5R52cDu6v
— ANI (@ANI) September 22, 2021
This move can be an approach to target ongoing clashes between Canada and India due to Canada’s new travel rules and blurring out the Covishield Vaccine recognition. According to these new rules despite getting fully vaccinated with two doses of Covishield vaccine, the Indian travellers isn’t considered as safe because of this they have to be in 10 days of quarantine upon their arrival in the U.K.
Also, the Indian travellers have to carry the proof of a negative COVID-19 molecular test of the travellers from the approved Genestrings Laboratory at the Delhi airport taken within 18 hours of the scheduled departure of their direct flight to Canada. Also before boarding, air operators will ensure that fully vaccinated travellers have uploaded their information into the ArriveCAN mobile app or website. If the travellers are unable to meet these requirements then they will be denied boarding.