Covishield Stock Piles Up To Over 24 Crore, Serum Institute Worried

Mumbai: Serum Institute of India (SII) is worried about the increasing stock of the Covishield vaccine.

The world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines has recently communicated to the Union Health Ministry that it has a manufactured stock of 24.8 crore Covishield doses and the number is increasing daily, The Indian Express reported.

Serum Institute has urged the Central government to fast-track Covishield movement, citing difficulties being faced in production and cold chain space planning for other vaccines due to increasing stock of the COVID-19 jab.

Covishield apart, the Pune-based Serum Institute manufactures and supplies different life-saving vaccines to EPI, UNICEF and different countries.

“To fulfil our domestic and global supply commitments, we have to plan our production/cold chain space/human resource well in advance. In view of continuous increase in the stock of Covishield, we are facing a lot of difficulties in production/cold chain space/human resource planning for other life-saving vaccines,” Prakash Kumar Singh, Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs at SII, was quoted as saying.

“In view of these facts, genuine difficulties and as this matter is directly concerned with the availability of various other life-saving vaccines in our country and the world at large, we request for your kind intervention for fast-track movement of our Covishield vaccine domestically and globally,” Singh stated.

SII has been allowed to export 50 lakh doses of Covishied under the UN-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing programme to Nepal, Tajikistan, Mozambique and Bangladesh.

The first lot of Covishield will reach Nepal on November 24.