New Delhi: The production of Covishield has been ramped up to around 110 million doses this month. This information was provided by sources at the Serum Institute of India (SII) here Tuesday. India at present is seeking aggressive inoculation of people to prevent the impending third wave of Covid-19 infection. “The commitment to produce 100-110 million doses of Covishield by July has been achieved,” Serum Institute sources were quoted as saying by ‘NDTV.com’.
The two major vaccines that are being used for inoculation are Covishield and Covaxin. India’s vaccination effort has been marked by delays, policy changes and supply constraints.
Sources said in addition to Covishield, the SII is presently focused on the rollout of the Covovax (Novavax) vaccine, which is yet to get Emergency Use Authorisation, and Russia’s Sputnik V, which should be available in numbers from September.
Also read: Huge dip in daily Covid-19 vaccination rate worries government
The Centre had earlier said that it is hoping to vaccinate the entire population of India by the year-end.
However, Delhi and Maharashtra are among states that have flagged vaccine shortage. This came after the central government launched a new phase of universalisation of COVID-19 vaccination June 21. Under the new rules, the Centre is providing vaccines free-of-cost to all states. Many government-run vaccination centres in Delhi have been closed for the past few days because the city has run out of Covishield stocks.
Also there has been a decline in average daily inoculations since June 21 across India according to government data.
According to the data available on the CoWIN platform, an average of 61.14 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine was administered daily in the week from June 21-27 in India. It dropped to 41.92 lakh doses daily in the subsequent week of June 28-July 4. Then in the week from July 5 to July 11, the daily average vaccine doses number further dipped to 34.32 lakh doses.