New Delhi: As the country is all set to launch its coronavirus vaccine drive from January 16, reports on Monday claimed that the Oxford vaccine is likely to be priced at Rs 200 a vial and the Centre may place an order today.
Sources at Serum Institute of India (SII) told NDTV that a few million doses of Covishield will also be supplied every week and 11 million doses may be supplied in the initial lot.
The development comes as the Centre is ready for the vaccine drive from January 16 after Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against the coronavirus, “Covishield”, was cleared by the Government for emergency use along with Bharat Biotech’s indigenous “Covaxin” earlier this month.
Earlier, Serum Institute chief Adar Poonawalla had said that the vaccine would be priced at about Rs 1,000 per dose for the private market in India and would cost the government about Rs 250 ($3.40) per dose.
The decision for vaccine drive was taken at a high-level meeting where PM Modi reviewed the status of COVID-19 and vaccine preparedness across states and union territories.
After healthcare and frontline workers, priority will be given to those above 50 years of age and the under-50 population groups with co-morbidities, together numbering around 27 crore.
According to the Health Ministry guidelines on COVID-19 vaccination, the latest electoral roll for Lok Sabha and Legislative Assembly elections will be used to identify the population aged 50 years or more.
Later today, PM Modi is scheduled to interact with chief ministers of all states via video conferencing where they will discuss the COVID-19 situation and the vaccination roll-out.
There are 2,24,190 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which constitutes 2.16 per cent of the total caseload so far of over 1.04 crore, according to the latest Health Ministry data. More than 1.5 lakh people have died so far.