India Producing Vaccine Doses In Crores Every Month But Still Out Of Reach For Most People

New Delhi, 24th May 2021: According to the Government and vaccine producers, India is producing 2.7 million doses each day without taking the Sputnik V vaccine into account. However, the vaccination average of the first three weeks of May is only 1.6 million doses. States are continuously flagging the vaccine shortage and few of the states have had to close their vaccination programmes due to the shortage.

In an affidavit to the Supreme Court, the Centre had put it on record that Serum Institute of India (SII) is producing 65 million doses in a month and Bharat Biotech is producing 20 million doses. Bharat Biotech is supposed to up the production to 55 million doses by July. The Centre also stated that production of Sputnik V is expected to go up at 1.2 million doses a month from the current capacity of three million.

SII has repeatedly admitted that its production capacity is 60-70 million doses in a month. Bharat Biotech CMD Krishna Ella had stated that the company produced 20 million doses in April and it will be producing 30 million in May.

According to these numbers, our vaccine plan must receive 85 million doses in May. Even so, the CoWin portal shows that in May, only 36 million doses have been given to the people until now. If this trend is to continue then we may be able to reach 50 million doses in May.

One of the explanations for these gaps between vaccine delays could be that the quota for the private sector, which is 1/4th of the total production, is not getting utilized properly.

States are consistently complaining about the lack of doses. In states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi, the governments had stopped vaccinating people between 18-45 age groups due to the interrupting supply. On Saturday, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh wrote to the Prime Minister in which he mentioned the interrupting supply of doses as well as high rates for vaccination in private hospitals.