A day after Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin was approved for emergency use for children in the 2 to 18 age group, there’s more good news. A total of 60 lakh doses of Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D vaccine are ready after production, according to top government sources quoted in a report by news agency Asian News International (ANI).
Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D was approved for emergency use on August 20. The vaccine is a needle-free three-dose plasmid DNA vaccine against Covid-19.
According to the ANI report, in October, India will have a vaccine capacity of 28 crore doses, including 22 crore doses of Covishield and six crore of Covaxin.
The central government is also planning to hit 100 crore doses by October 18. The union health ministry is planning to mark the day with events across the country.
Earlier, around 1.5 lakh doses of ZyCoV-D cleared the quality test at Central Drugs Laboratory in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh. The government is negotiating to bring down the price of the vaccine, for which manufacturers have quoted a price of Rs 1,800 to 1,900 per dose. The government feels this is on the higher side for a three-dose vaccine.
The price of the ZyCov-D vaccine is high due to its complex gun and applicator mechanism, which costs more.
According to earlier estimates, the first one crore doses of ZyCov-D are likely to be available this month. The vaccine will be the first in India to be administered to children in the age group of 12-18 years. According to National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, the Covid working group is in favour of starting inoculations for children and the details of co-morbidities and prioritisation of beneficiaries in adolescents will be released soon, government sources had said.
Read all the Latest News , Breaking News and IPL 2022 Live Updates here.
Comments
0 comment