India’s first indigenously developed mRNA vaccine against the dominant Omicron variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus will cost ₹2,292, Sanjay Singh, CEO, Gennova Biopharmaceuticals, said at a press conference on June 24. The vaccine will for now only be available as a booster or “precaution dose”, that is, somebody who has already been vaccinated thrice will be ineligible as the relevant expert committees, which recommend vaccines for public administration, have not permitted companies to administer a fourth dose in India unlike, for instance, in the United States and Europe.
This price, however, is the retail price of the vaccine and the government currently has no plans to make a bulk purchase, as it did in the case of Covishield and Covaxin in 2021, that enabled these vaccines to be available for free at government health centres. “We expect to make this vaccine available as a booster in private healthcare centres as well as export it to several international markets,” Dr. Singh added.
GEMCOVAC-OM is the only mRNA vaccine currently approved in India — again under ‘emergency use authorisation’ — that has been made specifically to counter the Omicron variant. Existing vaccines available as booster shots range from ₹800 (Innovac, Bharat Biotech’s nasal-drop vaccine), ₹225 for Covaxin, Covovax and Covishield (as of December 2022), and ₹400 for Corbevax. So far, only 28% of India’s population has taken a third or precaution dose, and slackening demand for booster doses means that not all of these vaccines are easily available at health centres, either privately owned or government-run.
