India ordered 100 crore coronavirus vaccine doses till July 16, says Centre

The government has so far ordered about 100 crore doses of Covid vaccine, two-thirds of that in the last two weeks. This was revealed in a health ministry response to a question in Rajya Sabha. According to the reply, 66 crore doses were ordered on July 16 out of 100.6 crore doses ordered so far by the central government.

Junior health minister, Bharati Pravin Pawar, was answering a question from Congress MP Kapil Sibal on Covid vaccines ordered by the government so far from various manufacturers. The data does not include doses that India got from Covax (a global mechanism for pooled procurement for various countries), those procured by the states and the doses directly procured by private hospitals from the two manufacturers.

Till March 12, the government had ordered only 18.6 crore doses, after which it ordered 16 crore on May 5. Till May end, it had ordered 26.6 crore doses of Covishield and eight crore doses of Covaxin.

In response to the question seeking details of orders placed with foreign vaccine manufacturers, the minister said that the government had constituted a team to deal with various issues related to procurement of Covid vaccines from foreign manufacturers and that “this team is in continuous dialogue with foreign manufacturers”.