The sale of India's first indigenous Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin, will yield royalty payments for the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), as the intellectual property governing the use of the vaccine was “shared”, reports The Hindu.

The Covaxin has been developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the ICMR.

“The Public-Private Partnership was executed under a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the ICMR and the BBIL which includes a royalty clause for the ICMR on net sales and other clauses like prioritisation of in-country supplies. The product IP is shared. It is also agreed that the name of ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV) will be printed on the vaccine boxes. The same is being done now,” ICMR Director-General Balram Bhargava told The Hindu.

He, however, did not specify the amount of money that was spent.

Notably, Covaxin is one of the two vaccines, the other being the Serum Institute of India's Covishield, that are currently being used in India's Covid-19 vaccination drive.

Both the vaccines comprise two doses. Covishield has overall efficacy of 70 per cent, but it can be over 90 per cent when administered as a half dose followed by a full dose a month later.

Covaxin has shown the efficacy of 78 per cent in the second interim analysis and 100 per cent efficacy against 'severe Covid-19 disease'.

Earlier, a study by the ICMR reported that Covaxin is effective against multiple variants of the Covid-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus, including the double mutant strain found in India and other countries.

The Pune-based National Institute of Virology (NIV) had successfully isolated and cultured multiple variants of concern of SARS-CoV-2 virus including the variants originating from the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil.

The NIV has demonstrated the neutralization potential of the Covaxin against the variants from Brazil and the UK in a study published in the Journal of Travel Medicine in March.