According to a report by NDTV, Serum Institute of India (SII) has ramped up its production of Covishield vaccine up to around 110 million doses this month.
"The commitment to produce 100-110 million doses of Covishield by July has been achieved," Serum Institute sources were quoted by NDTV.
SII sources told that Serum is presently also focusing on the rollout of Covovax (Novavax) vaccine and Russia's Sputnik. Covovax is yet to receive Emergency Use Authorisation. While Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) on Tuesday announced that the first batch of Sputnik vaccine is expected to be produced at Serum Institute of India (SII)'s facilities in September.
The Centre says it hopes to vaccinate all adults by the year-end.
It was on June 21 that India made a global record with highest single-day vaccinations as it administered over 86 lakh COVID-19 jabs in a day. A little over a week later, the vaccination rate of the country dropped by 68 percent with India administering just 27.6 lakh jabs on July 1, as per the Union Health Ministry data.
According to the data available on the CoWIN platform, an average of 61.14 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered daily in the week from June 21-27 in India, which dropped to 41.92 lakh doses daily in the subsequent week of June 28-July 4. In the week from July 5 to July 11, the daily average vaccine doses number further dipped to 34.32 lakh doses.
While the COVID vaccination drive was suspended in Mumbai on July 9, many other cities and towns in Maharashtra continued to wait for a constant supply of vaccine doses.
Maharashtra Assembly on June 30 passed a resolution seeking three crore Covid-19 vaccine doses per month from the Centre.
Along with Maharashtra, the national capital too faced vaccination shortage. Delhi ran out of its stocks for the Covishield vaccine against coronavirus disease (Covid-19), news agency PTI reported on Monday night, citing officials familiar with the matter. Manish Sisodia, the deputy chief minister of Delhi, also took to his official handle on Twitter to inform denizens regarding the vaccine shortage in the national capital.
