The production of Covishield has been ramped up to around 110 million doses this month, Serum Institute of India (SII) sources said today as the country struggles with the supply of vaccines to inoculate enough to stave off a third wave of Covid.
"The commitment to produce 100-110 million doses of Covishield by July has been achieved," Serum Institute sources told NDTV.
Covishield and Covaxin are the bedrock of India's vaccination effort, which has been marked by delays, policy changes and supply constraints.
Sources say in addition to Covishield, Serum Institute 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.
The Centre says it hopes to vaccinate all adults by the year-end.
However, Delhi and Maharashtra are among states that have flagged vaccine shortage after the central government launched a new phase of universalisation of COVID-19 vaccination on June 21. Under the new rules, the Centre provides vaccines free-of-cost to states.
Many government-run vaccination centres in Delhi were closed today because the city has run out of its Covishield stocks.
There has been a decline in average daily inoculations since June 21 across the country, government data showed on Monday.
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.
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