Ritik Gupta
New Delhi: The Covishield vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) will be priced at Rs 200 a dose after a price agreement was arrived at with the government, sources have asserted. The first 100 million doses will be priced Rs. 200, say SII sources, and the preliminary tranche to be stocked is anticipated to be 11 million doses.
With the government posting the order this evening, the medication is anticipated to roll out of SII’s Pune facilities tonight or tomorrow dawn.
“The price is fixed in writing,” asserted sources in the SII augmenting that exports of the life-saving vaccine are predicted after January 16 also. “A few million doses of Covishield will be supplied every week. 11 million doses may be supplied in the initial lot,” they added.
The administering of the vaccine will commence on January 16, the government told on the weekend.
The SII vaccine formulated by Oxford-AstraZeneca was freed for emergency use and Bharat Biotech’s indigenous “Covaxin” earlier this month.
Serum chief executive Adar Poonawalla had told NDTV that the vaccine would be priced at about Rs1,000 per dose when it is ultimately available in India’s private market.
The government hopes to encompass 300 million people in the first fraction of the programme. Health workers, frontline staff such as police and people over the age of 50 and those with co-morbidities, will be inoculated first.
That will need 600 million doses and Serum, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, has squirrelled away 50 million quantities for sudden dispersion.
India has asserted no constraints on exports but has yet to formally declare export authorisation despite tension from Brazil that has strived 2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine made in India.
The Oxford shot is anticipated to fulfil 90% of India’s mass immunisation programme demands.
