May all be free from illness” — with this slogan printed on every field, the cargo of Serum Institute of India’s Covishield set out from Pune to different components of India on Tuesday morning, kickstarting the biggest rollout of a vaccine within the nation’s historical past.
Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad, the 4 main regional depots for vaccines, acquired their quantum of Covishield doses inside 10 hours since their dispatch started from the SII premises at 4.30am on Tuesday. Overall, 55 lakh of the entire 1.1 crore doses had been dispatched from the SII premises until 5pm on Tuesday, officers confirmed. “The transport train for the remaining doses will proceed until Wednesday night,” a senior SII official stated.
Covaxin doses will attain Hyderabad airport early Wednesday morning after which they are going to be shipped to round 11 locations throughout the nation, together with Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Patna, Lucknow and Jaipur, sources in Bharat Biotech and the aviation trade confirmed to TOI.
PREPARING FOR THE VACCINE
On Day 1, Bengal will get 10L vaccine doses, tops states
Other cities like Patna, Guwahati, Vijaywada, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh additionally acquired their sanctioned doses on Tuesday afternoon. While UP, Bihar, Bengal, Odisha, Punjab, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra, Karnataka, J&Okay, Assam, Meghalaya and Delhi acquired part of their quota by Tuesday night, states like Maharashtra, Haryana, Kerala, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Himachal, Jharkhand, MP, and Chhattisgarh, amongst others, will get their shipments within the subsequent 24 to 48 hours.
Among the states that acquired the vaccine on Tuesday, Bengal topped the listing with 10 lakh doses, adopted by Karnataka (6.7 lakh doses), Bihar (5.5 lakh doses) and Tamil Nadu
The Centre has positioned orders to obtain 1.1 crore doses of Covishield and 55 lakh doses of Covaxin, which is being produced by Bharat Biotech. While Covishield is priced at Rs 200 per dose, the association with Bharat Biotech is such that it’s charging Rs 295 per dose for 38.5 lakh doses and offering the remainder 16.5 lakh doses freed from value. “Hence, the price of Covaxin is Rs 206 per dose,” Union well being seceratry Rajesh Bhushan stated.
The first vaccine consignment of the nation, comprising 2.6 lakh Covishield doses loaded in three vans, arrived at Pune airport’s cargo dealing with and processing facility at 5.30am on Tuesday and was shipped out at 8.05 am on SpiceXpress flight SG8937.
Currently, SII is manufacturing 7 crore to eight crore vaccine doses monthly. Private gamers have been roped in for offering refrigerated vans, vans and chilly storage.
Sources at Pune airport stated 456 packing containers containing the vaccine vials and weighing 15,000kg had been transported to completely different states in 9 plane of various airways.
Aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted: “Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo and GoAir will function 9 flights from Pune with 56.5 lakh doses to Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Shillong, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Chandigarh.”
Airlines known as the beginning of the vaccine transportation a historic step. “We at GoAir are overwhelmed with the form of duty bestowed upon us to move the life-saving Covid-19 vaccines,” Kaushik Khona, CEO of GoAir, stated.
IndiGo stated they transported 900kg vaccine load from Pune to Chandigarh and Lucknow. “Starting January 13, the vaccine can be transported from Mumbai to different cities on the premise of allocation,” an IndiGo spokesperson stated. “Happy that of the 50 lakh Covid-19 vaccine doses delivered Tuesday, SpiceJet delivered 40 lakh,” SpiceJet CMD Ajay Singh tweeted. After receiving the primary vaccine flight, DIAL CEO Videh Kumar Jaipuria stated: “…we’ve got acquired the primary batch of Covid-19 vaccine at our airport… Both our terminals can deal with round 5.7 million vials in a day.”
