Others that are likely to benefit from an expected surge in demand are: pharmaceutical firms Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Cadila Healthcare and Hetero; logistics company FedEx; cold chain storage specialist Snowman Logistics and Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices, among others.

Hindustan Syringes says it will increase capacity by 42% to 1 billion units by the first half of next year. It has already shipped some 140 million syringes that disable themselves after one use for the global vaccine distribution program COVAX.

SII has already made and stockpiled more than 50 million doses of COVISHIELD and aims to ramp up production to 400 million doses by mid-2021. It has already applied for emergency use authorization of the vaccine in India.

The company could sell the vaccine at 250 rupees ($3.39) per dose to the Indian government and 1,000 rupees on the country’s private market. By comparison, the Pfizer’s supply deal with the U.S. government amounts to $39 for a two-dose course, while Moderna plans to charge between $25 and $37 per dose.

After successful human trials of two vaccines, one developed by Bharat Biotech and the other Russian Sputnik, the third vaccine — Zydus Cadilla’s vaccine ZyCov-D — would be given to a set of healthy volunteers in Kanpur.
The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) earlier had shortlisted Prakhar Hospital as one of two centres for human trials.

Recently, the Gurugram-based airline said its dedicated freighter division SpiceXpress has the capability to transport sensitive drugs and vaccines in controlled temperatures ranging from (-)40°c to (+)25°c.
The strategic partnership aims to not only provide a speedy and seamless solution for COVID-19 vaccine movement and delivery, but also to create a sustainable cold chain network both domestically and internationally, SpiceJet said in a release.

The COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.45 per cent.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 92,53,306.

The active caseload remained below 4 lakh for the fourth consecutive day. There are 3,72,293 active coronavirus infections in the country which comprise 3.81 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.