VAX THE NATION: Serum Institute To Supply 11 Million Doses To Centre At Rs 200 Each
Mumbai: Proud moment for the Parsi Zoroastrian Community.
A research scientist works inside a laboratory of India’s Serum Institute in Pune. | Reuters
The Serum Institute of India has signed a contract with the Centre to supply 11 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine at a price of Rs 200 each on Monday.The firm is the local maker of Covishield, the vaccine developed by the Oxford University and pharmaceuticals company AstraZeneca. The vaccine was given emergency-use approval earlier this month, along with Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.
Cyrus Poonawalla, the chairperson of the Poonawalla group, told the newspaper that the company was expecting a bigger order for vaccines next week.
Poonawalla said that the private sector should also be allowed to simultaneously roll out the vaccine. “Why should the private market and vulnerable groups – mainly elderly people – be deprived till the government starts distributing in their priority areas?” he told thenews agency.
Poonawalla added that the Serum Institute had a stock of 50 million [5 crore] doses for immediate distribution.
The Serum Institute is likely to begin dispatching vaccine doses from Tuesday. It needs to cover more than 20 locations across several states. The vaccines will be transported via air and road.
To assess the preparedness at all levels before the actual rollout of the vaccine, a third dry run on January 8 covered 4,895 sites across 615 districts in 33 states and Union Territories. Experts have said that vaccinating a billion people, including hundreds of millions of adults for the first time, against Covid-19 will be a daunting task in the first tranche.
India has so far registered 1,04,66,595 coronavirus cases and 1,51,160 deaths. As of Monday morning, the country’s active cases stood at 2,22,526 and the number of recoveries reached, 1,00,92,909. Meanwhile, the number of cases of the United Kingdom mutant virus strain rose to 96.