Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin to cost Rs 1,200 for private hospitals, Rs 600 for states

New Delhi, Apr 24: Bharat Biotech on Saturday announced that it would sell Covaxin at Rs 600 for state governments and Rs 1,200 for private hospitals.

In a statement, Bharat Biotech Chairman and Managing Director Krishna M Ella said the company is supplying the vaccine to the central government at Rs 150 per dosage and the government on its part is distributing it free of cost.

"We would like to state that more than 50 per cent of our capacities have been reserved for central government supplies," Ella said.

Bharat Biotech - COVAXIN® Announcement pic.twitter.com/cKvmFPfKlr

— BharatBiotech (@BharatBiotech) April 24, 2021

"Recovering costs is essential in the journey of innovation towards other vaccines such as Intranasal COVID-19...Our core mission for the last 25 years has been to provide affordable, yet world-class healthcare solutions for the globe,", he added.

Bharat Biotech said COVAXIN is an "inactivated and highly purified vaccine" and its manufacturing was expensive due to "very low process yields".

"All costs towards product development, manufacturing facilities and clinical trials were deployed primarily using internal funding and resources of Bharat Biotech," the statement added.

Serum Institute of India (SII), which manufactures AstraZeneca's vaccine Covishield at its Pune facility, earlier this week announced a price of Rs 600 per dose and at Rs 400 for state governments and any new contract by the central government.

This compared to Rs 150 per dose it charges the central government for the existing supplies.