Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Mansukh Mandaviya on August 29 released the first commercial batch of Bharat Biotech’s COVAXIN manufactured at Ankleshwar in Gujarat.
The health minister took to Twitter to talk about the importance of vaccination drive in fighting the pandemic and said the launch “will increase the supply of vaccine in the country and will help in reaching the vaccine to every Indian.”
At the launch, Mansukh Mandaviya said that the production of Covaxin has started at the Ankleshwar facility and one crore vaccines will be received from Bharat Biotech’s new plant per month.
Product manufactured from Ankleshwar facilities will be available for supplies starting September 2021, the company said.
“We want to ensure that Bharat Biotech can ably meet the demand for Covaxin such that individuals across the country, and the globe, have access to the vaccine and can secure their health and safety. Our goal to develop a vaccine with global safety and efficacy standards has now been achieved, we are now marching towards the goal of annualized capacity of 1.0 billion doses,” Dr. Krishna Ella, chairman & managing director, Bharat Biotech, said.
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In his speech, the Minister noted that India was running one of the largest vaccination programmes in the world and it was made possible due to the development of these indigenous vaccines.
“The National COVID-19 Vaccination Programme has been successfully going on across all States and Union Territories since 16th January, 2021,” he added
India has administered over 63 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses so far, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare today.
As many as 73,85,866 COVID vaccine doses have been administered in the last 24 hours. With this, the country’s COVID-19 vaccination coverage reached 63,09,17,927, as per provisional reports till 7 am today. This has been achieved through 67,80,301 sessions.
(With inputs from ANI)
