Exclusive | SII, Bharat Biotech made additional 40-50 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine available in August

Supplies of Covishield and Covaxin, the main Covid-19 vaccines used in India, were ramped up by 40-50 million doses in August, helping the government to accelerate its nationwide vaccination drive and administer one dose to over one-third of the population.

Serum Institute of India, the manufacturer of Covishield, produced 150 million doses last month and is expected to maintain this level of output in September, people aware of the matter told Moneycontrol. The Pune-based company produced 110-120 million doses in July.

At this production rate, Serum Institute’s output will cross a billion doses per annum by December, the people said.

With government officials hinting at a possible reduction in the gap between two doses of Covishield from 84 days in the days ahead, demand for Covishield is expected to jump.

“We are always working towards raising production but we can’t discuss numbers,” said a person with knowledge of developments at Serum Institute, asking not to be identified.

Bharat Biotech, the manufacturer of Covaxin, which had been struggling to add capacity, managed to increase production and supplied 21 million doses of Covaxin to the government in August, people familiar with the matter said.

Bharat Biotech did not respond to queries on the matter.

The Hyderabad-based company said earlier this week it had started commercial rollout of vaccines from the Ankleshwar unit in Gujarat. Bharat Biotech has already deployed production lines at its Hyderabad, Malur, Bengaluru and Pune campuses and the addition of Ankleshwar will augment its Covaxin production capacity. The company has also started receiving bulk drugs from public sector vaccine maker Indian Immunologicals Ltd. last month.

The government last month approved emergency use of Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D vaccine for those aged 12 years and above, making it the sixth to be used in India’s inoculation drive.

Zydus said it expects to have 10 million doses of the vaccine ready by October. The vaccine needs to be taken in three doses.

In addition to ZyCoV-D, large supplies of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine are expected to enter the market by the end of September. The government has also approved Covid-19 vaccines developed by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson for emergency use.

Vaccination ramp-up

According to CoWIN, the online platform used to implement and monitor the vaccination drive, India has so far delivered over 665 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines – 582 million doses of Covishield, or 87 percent of the total, and about 80 million doses of Covaxin.

The government said on September 2 that more than 47.8 million doses are still unutilised and available with the states and Union Territories.

India had vaccinated 36.4 percent of the population with one dose as of August 31 and fully vaccinated 10.8 percent.

Monthly vaccine manufacturing capacity is expected to rise to about 360 million doses by the year-end, CARE Ratings said in a report. While India now vaccinates more than 5 million people a day on average, the country needs at least 2 billion doses to cover the entire population.

“The vaccination drive has been ramped up through availability of more vaccines, advance visibility of vaccine availability to states and Union Territories for enabling better planning by them and streamlining the vaccine supply chain,” the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on September 2.

As part of the nationwide vaccination drive, the Central government provides 75 percent of the vaccines produced locally free of cost to the states and Union Territories.