Panacea Biotec surges nearly 9 per cent on getting manufacturing licence for Sputnik V vaccine

Sputnik V was registered in India under the emergency use authorisation procedure on April 12, 2021.

Panacea Biotec Limited surged 8.9 per cent today morning after the company announced that it has received manufacturing licence from Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 in accordance to its collaboration with Russian Direct Investment Fund (Russia’s sovereign wealth fund). The licence is necessary for using Sputnik V, produced by Panacea Biotec in India.  

For checking quality control, the company had sent the batches to Gamaleya Centre in Russia, which was produced at its facilities at Baddi (Himachal Pradesh). These batches have successfully met all the quality parameters both at Gamaleya Centre in Russia as well as at Central Drug Laboratory, Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in India.  

Sputnik V was registered in India under the emergency use authorisation procedure on April 12, 2021. The vaccination drive against COVID-19 with Russian vaccine started on May 14, 2021. To date, it has been registered in 67 countries globally with a total population of over 3.5 billion people.  

The vaccine is based on a proven and well-studied platform of human adenoviral vectors and uses two different vectors for the two shots in a course of vaccination, providing immunity with a longer duration than vaccines using the same delivery mechanism for both the shots. 

On Monday, the stock of Panacea Biotec opened gap up 6.1 per cent at Rs 400.25 from its previous close of Rs 377.40 and surged to Rs 411 (up by 8.9 per cent) on BSE. However, at 11.48 am today, it was trading at Rs 399.25, up by 5.79 per cent.