Manipal Hospitals to offer Sputnik V later this month

Bengaluru-headquartered Manipal Hospitals has tied-up with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories to add Sputnik V to its vaccine portfolio of Covishield and Covaxin.

The Russian vaccine is currently under pilot at Manipal, and the hospital chain hopes to roll it out for the public after the second week of this month, Manipal Health Enterprises COO Karthik Rajagopal said in a press release.

The hospital, he said, has worked with Dr. Reddy’s to create the necessary infrastructure to maintain the Sputnik V vaccine.

Manipal has invested in creating a cold chain storage infrastructure as the vaccine needs to be stored in minus 18⁰ centigrade. The cold chain storage even has a real-time logger which records the temperature every second, the press release said.

Dr Reddy's CEO (Branded Markets) MV Ramana said: “We are pleased to collaborate with Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru as we scale up our soft pilot launch of the Sputnik V vaccine in India and extend it to more cities ahead of the commercial launch later in June. In the upcoming months we hope to inoculate as many Indians as possible.”