LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd August, 2020) The UK government has reached an agreement with Wockhardt � a global pharmaceutical and biotechnology company headquartered in the Indian city of Mumbai � on the production of a vaccine against the coronavirus as part of UK's effort to accelerate vaccine manufacturing, the government said on Monday.
In July, the government said it would invest more than 100 million Pounds ($126.9 million) in a new facility, the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre, that will speed up the mass production of a vaccine against COVID-19. The center is scheduled to open in the southeastern town of Braintree in December 2021 and will have the capacity to produce millions of doses of a successful vaccine against the disease each month.
"The government has entered into an 18-month agreement with global pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Wockhardt to carry out the crucial 'fill and finish' stage of the manufacturing process, which involves dispensing the manufactured [COVID-19] vaccine substance into vials ready for it to be distributed," the government said in a press release.
The so-called fill and finish stage is set to begin in September and will take place at CP Pharmaceuticals, a Wockhardt subsidiary based in in the UK town of Wrexham in North Wales, which is capable of finishing millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses.
