India on Sunday received the second consignment of Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine that recently joined the country’s arsenal against COVID-19.
“Second batch of Sputnik V arrives in Hyderabad, India!,” the vaccine developers tweeted.
Russia’s Ambassador to India Nikolay Kudashev said in a tweet: “given the recent launch of the Russian vaccine in the Indian vaccination campaign, this second delivery has become very timely.” Describing Sputnik V as a Russian-Indian vaccine, he told news agency ANI “we expect that its production in India will be gradually increased up to 850 million doses per year... There are plans to introduce single-dose vaccine soon in India-Sputnik Lite.”
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, the marketing partner of Sputnik V in India, tweeted that “the consignment that arrived today in Hyderabad contains 60,000 doses of the second dose component of the #SputnikV vaccine. Samples from the consignment will be sent for release to the Central Drugs Laboratory.”
The first consignment consisting of 1.5 lakh doses that arrived in Hyderabad on May 1 was cleared for use on May 13 by the Central Drugs Laboratory in Kasauli.
Samples drawn from all consignments would be sent to the central facility in Himachal Pradesh and the vaccine used on getting clearance. Dr. Reddy’s CEO-API and Services Deepak Sapra said this at a media briefing on May 14, following the soft launch of the vaccine by the company as part of a limited pilot. The first dose was administered in Hyderabad.
The maximum retail price of the vaccine is ₹995, including a 5% GST. The company said this was the rate at which it would be supplying the vaccine to the government and private sector.
