The Serum Institute of India (SII) has urged the government to fast-track Covishield movement citing the difficulties being faced in production and cold chain space planning for other vaccines because of the increasing stock of its COVID-19 jab, official sources said recently.

Prakash Kumar Singh, Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs, SII, is learnt to have recently communicated to the Union Health Ministry that it has a manufactured stock of 24,89,15,000 Covishield doses and it is increasing every day.

In addition to the Covishield vaccine, the Pune-based firm also manufactures and supplies various life-saving vaccines to EPI, UNICEF and different countries, Singh is learnt to have told the ministry.

“To fulfil our domestic and global supply commitments, we have to plan our production/cold chain space/human resource well in advance. In view of continuous increase in the stock of Covishield, we are facing a lot of difficulties in production/cold chain space/human resource planning for other life-saving vaccines,” an official source quoted Singh as having stated in the letter.

“In view of these facts, genuine difficulties and as this matter is directly concerned with the availability of various other life-saving vaccines in our country and the world at large, we request for your kind intervention for fast-track movement of our Covishield vaccine domestically and globally,” Singh is learnt to have stated.

The Centre has allowed SII to export 50 lakh doses of Covishied under the UN-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing programme to Nepal, Tajikistan and Mozambique. SII will also export Covishield to Bangladesh under COVAX, an official source said.

The Serum Institute will commence its COVID vaccine export under the COVAX programme from 23rd November and Nepal will receive the first lot of Covishiled on 24th November.

The government had in October permitted SII to export 10 lakh Covishield doses, each to Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh under the ‘Vaccine Maitri’ programme.