New Delhi: Indraprastha Apollo Hospital became the first in the city to administer Sputnik V, the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, on Sunday. As of now, the vaccine is being administered to Dr Reddy's employees and 170 hospital staff members were vaccinated on Sunday. It will be made available to the general public from June 20 onwards, the hospital said.
Currently 500 doses of the vaccine have arrived at the hospital and more are expected soon. As per the Central Government's latest pricing regulations, the Sputnik V vaccine will cost Rs 1,145, which will include hospital charges and tax.
Hyderabad's Dr Reddy's Laboratory, which also owns the Apollo Hospitals chain, is the local producer of this vaccine. Dr Reddy's conducted a small trial of the Sputnik V among the Indian population. It was already available in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam. Apollo Hospital was administering the vaccine at Rs 1,250 per dose earlier, but the Centre has fixed the upper cap of Sputnik at Rs 1,145 per dose. It is being given to private hospitals at Rs. 995.40 per dose. The doses that will later be produced by Dr Reddy's will cost less, the company said.
Madhukar Rainbow Children's Hospital in Delhi will also start administering Sputnik V to people by the end of this week.
The Sputnik V is the world's first registered vaccine against COVID-19 and was first developed by Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, backed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, and was approved in Russia on August 11. While the two-dose vaccine is now authorised in 67 countries, it has not yet been approved by the World Health Organization as an emergency vaccine. Sputnik V has an efficacy rate of over 90 per cent as per reports.
Dr Reddy's Laboratories had applied for emergency use approval of the vaccine in February. A single-dose variant called Sputnik Light, with a reported 79.4 per cent efficacy rate could be approved in the near future. Sputnik received approval from India's drug regulator in April and will be manufactured by five pharma firms in the country, producing over 850 million doses annually.