NEW DELHI: India’s Covid-19 vaccination drive continues to ride on Covishield largely as the share of indigenous vaccine Covaxin is less than 11 per cent of over 2 crore vaccine doses supplied to the states so far, shows the government data.
The Health Ministry, in response to a Parliament question, shared that out of nearly 2.15 crore Covid-19 vaccine doses supplied to the states, so far, only about 25 lakh doses are of Covaxin, produced by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech and the ICMR.
About 1.8 crore doses of Covishield, produced by Pune-based Serum Institute of India and developed on the technology by the Oxford University-AstraZeneca, had been sent to states till the beginning of this month.
Also, Covaxin has been sent to 19 states and UTs, while Covishield has been supplied to all the states and UTs. Incidentally, Tamil Nadu, which has one of the lowest (less than 40%) vaccination coverage in India as of now, has received the highest — 1,89,000 — doses of Covaxin followed by Telangana, which had received 1,72,960 doses of the vaccine.
The reasons for the lesser share of Covaxin include the reluctance of states in accepting the shots and supply issues by the manufacturer, officials at the ministry told this newspaper. The Centre had initially procured 110 million doses of Covishield and 55 million doses of Covaxin, but a second procurement was carried out in later weeks.