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Pilot program will administer doses from the first batch of 1,50,000 vaccines imported by Dr. Reddy’s
India
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Hyderabad,Chandigarh, May 17, 2021:
Apollo Hospitals (Apollo), Asia’s foremost integrated healthcare services provider and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories (Dr. Reddy’s), a leading Indian multinational pharmaceutical company today announced the launch of a limited pilot program for the Sputnik V vaccine as part of the soft launch by Dr. Reddy’s in India. The first phase of the program will kick-off with vaccinations in Hyderabad on Monday (May 17, 2021) and in Visakhapatnam on Tuesday (May 18, 2021) at separate facilities at the Apollo Hospitals in those cities. The vaccinations would follow the SOPs as recommended by the Government including registration on CoWIN.
Dr. K. Hari Prasad, President – Hospitals Division, Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Limited said, “With the opening up of the vaccination program for the private sector, we have intensified our efforts to accelerate the rate of vaccination through opening vaccination centers across our hospital network and are also in discussions with corporates to undertake vaccination on their premises.
We are currently administering COVID vaccine at 60 locations across the country including Apollo Hospitals, Apollo Spectra hospitals and Apollo Clinics. This pilot phase will allow Dr. Reddy’s and Apollo to test the arrangements and cold chain logistics and prepare for the launch. We are confident that with the Sputnik V vaccine, we will be able to make a significant contribution to ease availability and access to COVID vaccines to the community at large.”
“We already have two vaccines accessible here, by making more vaccines accessible, we can expedite the vaccination of our population and come out of this pandemic speedily. We are doing a soft launch of Sputnik V vaccine today, Dr Reddy’s Labs is importing this vaccine, this vaccine dose will be given in two doses. We are doing a trial run from today to fix any logistics issues and to prove that they are safe, by vaccinating around 50000 staff and families of DRL, across the country.
This vaccine has distinctly different vaccine for first and second dose, unlike the other vaccines which use the same vaccine for both the doses. The second dose has to be administered after twenty-one days. The cost of vaccination will be between Rs 1200 and Rs 1250 including vaccination and vaccine administering.”
M.V. Ramana, CEO – Branded Markets (India & Emerging Markets), Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories said: “We are pleased to collaborate with Apollo Hospitals as part of our soft pilot launch of the Sputnik V vaccine in India. We are working to scale up the pilot and take the vaccine to other cities, and in the upcoming months we hope to inoculate as many Indians as possible.” “The idea of the soft launch is to check if the systems are in place, across the length and breadth of the country. Initially we will import and will locally manufacture it in due course.”
The Sputnik V vaccines for the pilot program would be supplied by Dr. Reddy’s from the first batch of 1,50,000 vaccine doses imported by them for the soft launch. After Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam, the pilot program will be extended to Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, and Pune.
Dr Sauri, Head IPDO, R&D, DRL; said, over 2 crore people have been vaccinated in 63 countries by the Sputnik V vaccine. It’s been approved after doing Clinical trials on 33000 people in Russia and 1600 people in India and that enabled us to get emergency approval in India.
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