Pune-based pharmaceutical company Serum Institute of India (SII) reduced the prices of Covishield vaccine for states from ₹400 to ₹300 per dose. The SII CEO in a tweet said that this move will further save the funds of states going forward.
Calling it a “philanthropic gesture,” Poonawalla tweeted that the move “will save thousands of crores of state funds going forward… This will enable more vaccinations and save countless lives.”
It is learnt that the Centre had asked SII and Bharat Biotech, which makes Covaxin, to reduce prices.
“On Tuesday, a meeting was held between senior health ministry officials and manufacturers,” as per ET.
These are the prices fixed by SII for the Covishield vaccine:
Many argued earlier, that the price of the vaccine should be the same for everyone otherwise there is a risk that the precious vials may be moved to more lucrative private hospitals, making the poorer sections of the society wait longer.
A petition filed in the High Court of Kerala has also argued that the three-tier pricing is a violation of a citizen’s ‘right to health’.
Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech had priced its vaccine Covaxin at ₹600 per dose for state governments and said that private hospitals will be charged ₹1,200 per dose.
However, Government of India has so far provided nearly 16 crore vaccine doses to States/UTs free of cost, it said. More than 1 crore doses are still available with the States/UTs to be administered.
Along with this more than 57 Lakh doses, in addition, will be received by the States/UTs in the next three days as vaccination opens up for all adults. India’s cumulative vaccination coverage exceeded 14.78 crore.
Meanwhile, India on Wednesday registered 3,60,960 new Covid-19 cases and 3,293 related deaths. Active cases in India now stand at 29,78,709. The total number of cases of Covid-19 is 1,79,97,267, total recoveries is at 1,48,17,371 and total death toll is at 2,01,187.
 reduced the prices of Covishield vaccine for states from ₹400 to ₹300 per dose on Wednesday.){kind=link}