Covishield Vaccines Flown To Delhi, SpiceJet Carries 1st Consignment

Mumbai: Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Tuesday said Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo will today fly 56.5 lakh doses of Serum Institute of India’s COVID-19 vaccine Covishield from Pune to 13 cities.

A SpiceJet flight landed in Delhi from the Pune international airport with the first consignment of the Covid-19 vaccines.

“Civil aviation sector launches yet another momentous mission. Vaccine movement starts. First, two flights operated by @flyspicejet and @goairlinesindia from Pune to Delhi and Chennai have taken off,” Puri tweeted.

“Today @airindiain, @flyspicejet, @goairlinesindia and @IndiGo6E will operate 9 flights from Pune with 56.5 lakh doses to Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Shillong, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Chandigarh,” the civil aviation minister said in another tweet.

https://twitter.com/HardeepSPuri/status/1348839441956179972?s=20

Two vaccines, Covishield and Covaxin, have been granted the Emergency Use Authority (EUA) by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI). Covishield has been developed jointly by Oxford University and AstraZeneca and COVID-19 is India’s first and indigenous vaccine, developed by Hyderabad-based India Biotech International Limited.

India will start the world’s largest vaccination campaign from 16 January. While interacting with the Chief Ministers on the country’s immunization scheme, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that 30 million frontline workers would be vaccinated in the first phase, which would include the government. Vaccine 300 million citizens in the next few months.

India is the world’s second worst-hit country after the United States with more than 10.47 million cases, as per the Union health ministry’s data on Tuesday.

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