“We have started producing at risk because we know that it will be an uphill task — in the Indian context it’s small,” Ella said in an interview from Hyderabad on Monday. “That’s a huge challenge in front of us when we think of the hundreds of millions of doses even if half the country needs to be vaccinated.”

“An infrastructure to handle the Covid-19 vaccine has been developed to enhance the capacity for handling the vaccine supply from and to Hyderabad. The dedicated work station has been set up at the terminals to handle this sensitive shipment of the vaccine. Temperature zone has been developed for maintaining the vaccine. The staff has been given special training to handle the shipment of vaccine right from the acceptance till the shipment reaches the destination,” said T. Purushottam Singh, General Manager, Head operations

The discovery of the new strain, just months before vaccines are expected to be widely available, sowed new panic in a pandemic that has killed about 1.7 million people worldwide and more than 67,000 in Britain.At least two other flights from Britain have landed in India since the announcement of the flight ban, one in Mumbai and the other in the northern city of Amritsar.