The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Serum Institute of India, Adar Poonwalla, has claimed that the vaccine shortage in India would stay up to the month of July. The CEO of SII has revealed that to meet the need their company will increase the production capacity of COVID-19 vaccine from 70 million doses a month to about 100 million doses a month.
Speaking to media, Adar Poonwalla said, “The authorities did not expect the second wave of COVID-19 to be this deadly and this soon. Everybody really felt that India had started to turn the tide on the pandemic.” The Serum Institute of India (SII) is producing the ‘Covishield’ vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University in the UK.
The vaccine shortage has troubled the government as Covid-19 cases are spiking at a rapid rate on daily basis. The second wave of coronavirus has turned out to be deadlier than it was expected as India has been reporting over 3 lakh cases each day.