“Special Price Of Rs 200 Only For Government”: Adar Poonawalla On Vaccine

Pune:

The world is looking to India in the race to manufacture the hundreds of millions of vaccine doses needed to defeat the coronavirus, Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla said Tuesday, hours after three trucks rolled out from with 56.5 lakh doses of Covishield – the nation’s first Covid vaccine.

Mr Poonawalla, who called the moment “historic”, said many countries had written to the Serum Institute and the Prime Minister’s Office, looking to purchase 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 yet to announce clearance, despite pressure from Brazil which has sought two million doses of Covishield.

However, Mr Poonawalla indicated that the first priority was to the Indian government, which has ordered 11 million Covishield doses. He also said the SII was keen to ensure 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 said.

“After that we’ll be selling it at Rs 1000 per dose in the private market,” Mr Poonawalla added.

He also said that SII’s current production capacity was around 70 to 80 million doses.

The 56.5 lakh doses that were dispatched by SII this morning have been distributed to 13 cities, including national capital Delhi, Guwahati, Chennai, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Kolkata and Patna.

India begins the first phase of a mass vaccination – claimed as the largest in the world – on Saturday, with around 30 crore people, including three crore frontline workers, to be inoculated.

With input from ANI