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Written by Prabha Raghavan
| New Delhi |
January 6, 2021 3:15:27 am
India has agreed to give priority to Sri Lanka when supplying its COVID-19 vaccine to other countries, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday told Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Even as Serum Institute of India (SII) plans to initially provide Covishield to the Indian government at Rs 200 ($2.73) a dose, the price at which the government will actually procure the Pune firm’s Covid-19 vaccine is yet to be finalised, The Indian Express has learnt.
A senior government official told The Indian Express that the government has not announced anything. “It is SII (that has announced a price), so we are not responsible for what they say… We have not announced any price so far, that is where we stand,” the official said. “Once we fix it (price), we will definitely share it.”
Another senior official said the government was waiting to receive price quotations from SII as well as Bharat Biotech. “When we start with the process of procurement, they will give us the price quotation,” the official said.
When asked how the government planned to divide its procurement of Covishield and Covaxin, the first official said those details were yet to be finalised.
SII Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla has maintained that the vaccine would be offered to the government at a “very special” price of Rs 200 a dose for the first 100 million doses. He had also said that the two-shot vaccine would be sold for Rs 1,000 a dose to the general public once the firm received approvals to sell it in the private market. In response to emailed queries by The Indian Express on Tuesday, the firm confirmed these prices.
Bharat Biotech Managing Director Dr Krishna Ella did not announce a price for Covaxin.
