The Serum Institute of India, which is manufacturing the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine in India, said that around 50 million doses of the vaccine, are ready. A top official further said that the company will be able to scale up capacity to around 100 million by March next year.
The Pune-based company has applied to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) seeking emergency use authorisation for COVID-19 vaccine in the country, PTI reported.
"We have already manufactured 40-50 million dosages of the vaccine. The rollout of the vaccine is expected to be a bit slow in the initial phase due to logistics issue and is expected to pick up once things get sorted," Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla said.
Mr Poonawalla said the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine could be approved in the UK soon and by next month, the vaccine can also be approved in India.
Meanwhile, over two million individuals in the United States have received the first of two coronavirus vaccine shots, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data revealed on Monday.
The CDC has reported that 2,127,143 individuals in the United States have received the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine while 11,445,175 doses have been distributed throughout the US, ANI reported.