Bharat Biotech to sell Covaxin at Rs 600 for states, Rs 1,200 for private hospitals

New Delhi: Bharat Biotech on Saturday said it would provide its COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, to state governments at Rs 600 per dosage. The Hyderabad-based vaccine major also said that it would provide the vaccine to private hospitals at Rs 1,200 per dosage.

In a statement, Bharat Biotech Chairman and Managing Director Krishna M Ella said the company is supplying the vaccine to the central government at Rs 150 per dosage and the government on its part is distributing it free of cost.

"We would like to state that more than 50 per cent of our capacities have been reserved for central government supplies," Ella said.

Meanwhile, amid the row on pricing of Serum Institute's Covishield vaccine, the Centre has said that it will continue to procure the vaccine for Rs 150 only. It added that the vaccine that will be procured by the Centre will be given to states for free.

Serum Institute of India (SII), which makes the most used COVID-19 vaccine in the country, on Saturday defended pricing Covishield vaccine at 1.5 times the initial rate, saying the earlier price was based on advance funding and now it has to invest in scaling up and expanding capacity to produce more shots.

The world's largest vaccine maker, which manufactures Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine at Pune, earlier this week announced a price of Rs 600 per dose for private hospitals and Rs 400 per dose for state governments and for any new contract by the central government.

The opposition parties had criticised the differential pricing for COVID-19 vaccines, saying it was discriminatory and will benefit only a "few big industrialists" while common people will suffer.

They had demanded the Centre and state governments pay the same price for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Serum Institute of India (SII) in a statement clarified that there was an "inaccurate comparison" done between the global prices of the vaccine with India.

"Covishield is the most affordable COVID-19 vaccine available in the market today," SII said.

The initial prices were kept very low globally as these were based on advance funding given by those countries for at-risk vaccine manufacturing, it added.

"The initial supply price of Covishield for all government immunization programme, including India, has been the lowest", SII said.

Government procurement for countrywide immunization programmes in all countries, including India, has been at a far lower price as the volumes are very large, it added.

with agency inputs