New Delhi: The Serum Institute of India said that around 50 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine are ready. The manufacturing company of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine in India will be able to scale up capacity to around 100 million by March next year.
The Pune-based company has applied to the
Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) asking the use of the vaccine for emergency purposes in the nation, PTI agency reported.
NDTV quoted Adar Poonawalla, CEO, Serum Institute as saying, “We have already manufactured 40-50 million dosages of the vaccine. The rollout of the vaccine is expected to be a bit slow in the initial phase due to logistics issues and is expected to pick up once things get sorted.”
He further said the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine may be approved by the United Kingdom(UK) soon and by next month along with India.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data revealed on Monday that more than two million people in the United States have gotten the first of two COVID-19 vaccine shots,
The CDC has detailed that 2,127,143 people in the United States have gotten the first shot of the vaccine while 11,445,175 dosages have been appropriated all through the US, ANI reported.
Talking about India, the Union government had chosen eight districts in four states to conduct a two-day run of COVID-19 vaccination which begins on Monday, December 28 to 29.
The states which are going to witness the two-day dry run are Punjab, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat.
Hindustan Times (HT) quoted a senior official of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, “The dry run is being conducted to mobilize all elements involved in the Covid-19 vaccination drive that is planned for next year to test the vaccine delivery machinery. All elements except for the vaccine will be mobilized.”