Centre continuously engaged with domestic companies to ramp up production of COVID vaccines

COVID vaccine is a crucial pillar in the fight against the Corona virus disease.

The liberalised and accelerated Phase-3 strategy of COVID-19 vaccination drive has already been started in the country.

Despite the government’s efforts to vaccinate all the beneficiaries in a fastest manner, some misinformation about vaccination is also there in some sections of the society.

One of the misconceptions is that the Centre is not doing enough to ramp up domestic production of vaccines.

The Government of India has termed the claim as distorted and blatant lie saying that the Government is continuously engaged with various domestic companies to ramp up the production of COVID vaccines.

AIR correspondent reports, the Central Government is playing a role of an effective facilitator to enable more domestic companies to produce large number of COVID vaccines.

The Government of India is providing all kinds of assistance to the companies and Public Sector Units to increase number of production plants for ramping up the production of vaccines.

Indigenous vaccine Covaxin manufacturer Bharat Biotech has increased its number of manufacturing plants.

With this step, the production is expected to increase 10 crore doses in a month from the present level of one crore by October this year.

Additionally, three Public Sector Units have set a target to produce around four crore doses by December this year.

Another vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute is continuously engaged in ramping up production of Covishield vaccine from six crore 50 lakh doses per month to 11 crore doses per month.

The Government is also ensuring that Russian vaccine Sputnik-V will be manufactured by six companies in collaboration with Dr Reddy’s Lab.

With these efforts, it is estimated that over 200 crore doses of vaccines will be produced by the end of December this year.

Under the COVID Suraksha Scheme, the Union Government is also providing financial and technical support to various Indian companies like Zydus Cadilla and Gennova for development of other indigenous COVID vaccines.

The Government is also providing support for the development of Bharat Biotech’s single dose intranasal vaccine which proves to be a game-changer for the world in coming months.