Hyderabad-headquartered Bharat Biotech flew the primary batch of Covaxin, its two-dose Covid-19 vaccine, to 11 cities throughout India on Wednesday, a day after Serum Institute of India (SII) shipped batches of Covishield, a variant of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s AZD1222 vaccine that it has manufactured beneath licence in India.
Both these vaccines are anticipated for use within the authorities’s mass vaccination programme in opposition to Covid-19 that begins on Saturday.
A second of pleasure and accomplishment as the primary consignment of COVAXIN™ is dispatched from Bharat Biotech in the present day at 1:00 AM, IST. The indigenous vaccine is all set to vaccinate the nation in opposition to the dreadful #SARS_CoV_2 #BharatBiotech #COVAXIN #MakeInIndia #IndiaFightsCorona pic.twitter.com/yqFSSXTl0A
— BharatBiotech (@BharatBiotech) January 13, 2021
Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had tweeted that 56.5 lakh doses of Covishield could be flown out of SII’s Pune headquarters on Tuesday. Subsequently, the Union Ministry of Health had stated that by 4 pm, 54.72 lakh doses of the vaccine had reached shops throughout India.
It was not instantly clear on Wednesday what number of doses of Covaxin had been despatched out by Bharat Biotech. The firm didn’t reply to queries by The Indian Express looking for these particulars.
Health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Tuesday introduced that the federal government had signed a purchase order settlement for 55 lakh doses of Covaxin, of which 16.5 lakh doses could be donated to the federal government without cost. The remaining 38.5 lakh doses could be priced at Rs 295 per dose, excluding taxes.
The Hyderabad agency stated it had efficiently shipped the primary batch of the vaccines to Ganavaram, Guwahati, Patna, Delhi, Kurukshetra, Bangalore, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Chennai, and Lucknow “in the early hours of Wednesday”. Each vial shipped accommodates 20 doses.
“While some shipments have arrived in the respective cities, others will be delivered later this evening,” the agency stated in an announcement.
