Pune:
The globe is searching to India in the race to manufacture the hundreds of millions of vaccine doses necessary to defeat the coronavirus, Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla stated Tuesday, hours right after 3 trucks rolled out from with 56.5 lakh doses of Covishield – the nation’s initially Covid vaccine.
Mr Poonawalla, who named the moment “historic”, stated several nations had written to the Serum Institute and the Prime Minister’s Office, searching to buy vaccines from India for their citizens.
“We have contracts with many countries – Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Bangladesh and those in Africa. Countries are looking to India because we have large production facilities and smaller companies around the world cannot as yet produce the required number of doses,” he told news agency ANI.
India has placed no restrictions on exports so far but has but to announce clearance, in spite of stress from Brazil which has sought two million doses of Covishield.
However, Mr Poonawalla indicated that the initially priority was to the Indian government, which has ordered 11 million Covishield doses. He also stated the SII was keen to make sure equitable distribution and that the challenge for 2021 was “to bring the vaccine to everyone in the country”.
“We want to support the common man… the vulnerable, the poor and the healthcare workers (and so) we’ve given a special price of Rs 200 for the first 100 million doses on request by the government. We decided initially we won’t make a profit. After that we will still maintain a very reasonable price… it will be a little more than Rs 200, which is our cost price,” he stated.
“After that we’ll be selling it at Rs 1000 per dose in the private market,” Mr Poonawalla added.
He also stated that SII’s existing production capacity was about 70 to 80 million doses.
The 56.5 lakh doses that had been dispatched by SII this morning have been distributed to 13 cities, such as national capital Delhi, Guwahati, Chennai, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Kolkata and Patna.
India starts the initially phase of a mass vaccination – claimed as the biggest in the globe – on Saturday, with about 30 crore people today, such as 3 crore frontline workers, to be inoculated.
With input from ANI