Bharat Biotech, which has received Emergency Use Authorisation approval from the Drug Controller General of India for its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin, is set to dispatch the vaccine from Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport on Tuesday evening, Pradeep Panicker, CEO of GMR, said.
Speaking to the media, he said, “Today evening the first consignment of the Bharat Biotech vaccine will go out of Hyderabad to 11 destinations. So the vaccine programme has started and we’re very happy to be a part of it. Hyderabad airport is fully geared to handle the cargo of vaccines, both coming into Hyderabad and the ones we’re sending out.”
“Hyderabad has one-third vaccine production capacity of the world. Hyderabad has an important role to play in vaccine production. Our GMR cargo team is fully geared up to handle this,” he added.
Covaxin is being indigenously developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) – National Institute of Virology (NIV). The inactivated vaccine is developed and manufactured in its BSL-3 (Biosafety Level 3) bio-containment facility, the firm had earlier said.
An email query by PTI to Bharat Biotech about the delivery schedule of Covaxin reportedly evoked a “no comments” response. Bharat Biotech will provide 55 lakh doses of the Covaxin vaccine, priced at Rs 295 per dose. In the first consignment, 38.5 lakh doses will be provided while 16.5 doses will be provided in the second round.
The Government of India has given permission to two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use – Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, and Oxford-AstraZeneca and Serum Institute of India’s Covishield. The government said health workers will be administered the vaccine in the first phase of the roll-out followed by frontline workers and senior citizens. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had on Saturday said that one crore healthcare workers and two crore frontline workers would be given the vaccine free in the first phase, adding that the details of how the 27 crore elderly beneficiaries will be vaccinated by July are being finalised.