RUSSIAN JAB FLOPS

Some of India’s private hospitals have cancelled orders for Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine as they struggle to sell Covid-19 shots amid surging supplies of free doses of other vaccines offered by the government.

Some industry officials said low demand and the extremely cold storage temperatures required have spurred at least three big hospitals to cancel orders for Sputnik V, sold only on the private market in the world’s biggest producer of vaccines.

From May until last week, private hospitals doled out just about 6 per cent of all vaccines administered in India, although the government had freed them to buy up to a quarter of domestic output.