Vaccine not affected as fire hits plant in India
Five people have died as a fire tore through a building in the world’s biggest vaccine production hub in western India yesterday, officials said.
“Five people have died,” Pune city mayor Murlidhar Mohol told reporters following the fire at the Serum Institute of India (SII).
Rescue workers discovered five bodies in the under-construction building after the blaze was brought under control, media reports said.
But the company insisted its production of drugs to counter the coronavirus pandemic was not affected.
SII is producing millions of doses of the Covishield coronavirus vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
Television channels showed thick clouds of grey smoke billowing from the sprawling site in Pune.
“It is not going to affect production of the Covid-19 vaccine,” a Serum Institute source said, adding that the blaze was at a new facility being built on the 100 hectare campus.
A fire official told reporters that “three or four people were inside” the new facility when the blaze broke out but all had been rescued and the blaze brought under control.
Both police and the company said the cause of the blaze was not immediately known.
The complex where the fire broke out is a few minutes’ drive from the facility where coronavirus vaccines are produced, reports said.
India began one of the world’s biggest vaccine roll-outs on Saturday, aiming to vaccinate 300 million people by July with both Covishield and Covaxin.
Many other countries are also relying on the institute to supply them with the vaccine.
India exported its first batch on Wednesday – to Bhutan and the Maldives – followed by two million doses to Bangladesh and a million to Nepal yesterday.
The country plans to offer 20 million doses to its South Asian neighbours, with Latin America, Africa and Central Asia next in line.
Serum Institute also plans to supply 200 million doses to Covax, a World Health Organisation-backed effort to procure and distribute inoculations to poor countries.
Brazil last weekend was set to send a plane to collect two million doses from SII but President Jair Bolsonaro said that “political pressure” in India had postponed the flight.
Adar Poonawalla told the
Times of India it would supply Brazil with vaccines in two weeks’ time.