Central Covid Panel says Almost 25 Crore Vaccine Doses To Be Expected By August

New Delhi: Almost 25 crore ‘Made in India’ vaccines are expected to be available by August as production capacities are increased. A senior official has said and noted that it will go a long way in meeting the target of vaccinating one crore people daily against Covid-19.

Since then the vaccination for all those above 18 years are open up, there is a shortage of vaccines.

Dr NK Arora, Chairman of COVID-19 working group under National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI), said “Yesterday, SII in a letter mentioned that they will be manufacturing 10-12 crore of vaccine doses, which is almost 50 per cent ramping up (of their capacity) by June-end. Similarly, Covaxin is also going to increase its production and by July-end they will also produce between 10-12 crore doses (per month).”

SII (Serum Institute of India) a Pune based company, manufactures Covishield vaccine against Covid-19 while Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech manufactures Covaxin.

Dr. Arora said that,”By August we will have 20-25 crore vaccine doses per month, another 5-6 crore doses from other manufacturing units or if we get international vaccine doses. The objective is to vaccinate one crore people every day.”

He said India may start in few weeks testing the feasibility of a regimen “that mixes two different doses of COVID vaccines to see if it helps boost the immune response to virus”. The researchers in such a study would see the effects of giving a different vaccine in the second dose.

Currently, India has availability of 7-7.5 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin per month.

Cases of covid-19 are declining day by day in India and 1,52,734 new infections were recorded in the last 24 hours, the lowest in 46 days.