Floundering Private Sales of Vaccine in India Deal Blow to Russia’s Sputnik V

ome of India’s private hospitals have cancelled orders for Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine as they struggle to sell COVID-19 shots amid surging supplies of free doses of other vaccines offered by the govt .

Some industry officials said low demand and therefore the extremely cold storage temperatures required have spurred a minimum of three big hospitals to cancel orders for Sputnik V, sold only on the private market within the world’s biggest producer of vaccines.

“With storage and everything, we’ve cancelled our order for two ,500 doses,” said Jitendra Oswal, a senior medical official at Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College and Hospital within the western city of Pune.

“Demand is additionally not great. there’s a category of individuals , barely 1%, that wanted to travel for Sputnik. For the remainder , anything would do.”
India may be a major production centre of Sputnik V, with planned capacity of about 850 million shots a year, and low domestic uptake could mean higher exports instead, a step backers are already pushing for. read more

The health ministry didn’t immediately answer an invitation for comment.
Since a June launch event by Indian distributor Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd (REDY.NS) only 943,000 doses of Sputnik V are administered by hospitals, a fraction of the national total of quite 876 million.

Dr. Reddy’s declined to comment.

The mainstay of India’s inoculation drive is that the AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccine, which may be stored in regular refrigerators, unlike Sputnik V, which needs temperatures of -18 degrees Celsius (-0.4°F), impossible to ensure in most of India.

The vaccine is additionally the maximum amount as 47% costlier than AstraZeneca on the private market.

Avis Hospitals, which runs eight vaccination centres within the southern city of Hyderabad, has also cancelled an order for 10,000 Sputnik V doses, said a source with direct knowledge of the matter who sought anonymity in discussing business matters.

Avis didn’t answer an email seeking comment.

Another Pune hospital, which declined to be identified so as to stay intact its ties to Dr. Reddy’s, which is additionally a serious drug supplier, said it had also cancelled its Sputnik V orders.

Sputnik V is simply one among the vaccines affected by a pointy fall privately sales.

Pune’s Bharati hospital will end its COVID-19 vaccination programme when it runs out of AstraZeneca doses, as daily inoculations have fallen about 90% to 100, since private sales picked up in May and June, Oswal said.

Just 9,000 doses remain of stocks of 62,000 it ordered.

Avis’s COVID-19 vaccine sales have shrunk 40% with existing stocks expected to last until December, rather than October, said the source.

India’s monthly production of vaccine, mainly of the AstraZeneca shot known domestically as Covishield, has quadrupled to 300 million doses from April, when a dramatic surge in infections and deaths prompted a halt in exports.

Overseas sales are to resume in October.

Covishield accounts for 88% of India’s inoculations, followed by Bharat Biotech’s domestically developed Covaxin, both administered free, mainly at government centres, since mid-January.