Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla Takes Covishield Vaccine ‘To Endorse Its Safety & Efficacy’; Shares Video On Twitter

Pune, January 16, 2021: As India sets on it’s one of the largest and most awaited vaccination drive, the Serum Institute of India’s (SII) chief executive officer, Adar Poonawalla took the shot of its home-manufactured ‘Covishield’ vaccine, which has been co-developed by a British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and University of Oxford. Poonawalla took to Twitter to endorse his vaccine punch by uploading a video, in order to build people’s confidence about the vaccine.

He wrote, “I wish India & Sri @narendramodi ji great success in launching the world’s largest COVID vaccination roll-out. It brings me great pride that #COVISHIELD is part of this historic effort & to endorse it’s safety & efficacy, I join our health workers in taking the vaccine myself.”   

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the pan India rollout of COVID-19 vaccination drive via video conferencing today. This is the world’s largest vaccination program covering the entire length and breadth of the country. A total of 3006 session sites across all States and UTs were virtually connected during the launch.

The Prime Minister started his speech by paying compliments to the scientists who were associated with the development of the vaccines. He said, usually it takes years to prepare a vaccine but here, in such a short time, not one but two made-in-India vaccines were launched. The Prime Minister cautioned the people to be careful about not missing taking two doses. He said that there will be a gap of one month between the doses. He asked people to keep their guards up even after taking the vaccine as only two weeks after taking the second dose, the human body will develop necessary immunity against Corona.

The Prime Minister put the unprecedented scale of the vaccination drive in perspective by informing that, in the first round itself, 3 crore people, which is more than the population of at least 100 countries of the world, are being vaccinated. He said that this needs to be taken up to 30 crores in the second round when elderly and people with serious co-morbidities will be vaccinated. He said that there are only three countries- India, USA and China, who have a population of more than 30 crores.