After the government gave emergency use approval to twovaccines: the Covishield developed by Oxford & AstraZeneca and BharatBiotech's Covaxin, the Serum Institute of India (SII) sends out Covid-19vaccine, Covishield amidst tight security to 13 cities, four days prior to themass inoculation drive in India.
Covishield is taken in three temperature controlledtrucks. Carrying 478 boxes and each box weighing 32 kg, the trucks left from SIIpremises at around 5 am for the Pune airport.
In a tweet, the Pune airportwrites, "Ready get set go! Stand by India! The vaccine to killthe disease is being loaded into the aircraft for distribution all over thecountry now."
Aviation Minister, Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted that,"Civil aviation sector launches yet another momentous mission."
"Today, Air India, SpiceJet and IndiGoAirlines will operate nine flights from Pune with 56.5 lakh doses to Delhi,Chennai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Shillong, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Vijayawada,Bhubaneswar, Patna, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Chandigarh," he tweeted.
The first two flights operated by GoAir and SpiceJet tookoff with the vaccines to Delhi and Chennai.
One of the Twitter users tweeted, "Congratulations to all theground staff and members of @aaipunairport this is indeed a historicmoment. Your tweets exemplifies India's strive towards 'Atamanirbhar Bharat' inthe global fight against #Covid-19."
PTI also reported that vaccines are also being taken outin two cargo flights to Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Kolkata and Guwahati. However,the consignment for Mumbai will leave by road.
According to a report published in the NDTV website, thegovernment plans to buy total 5.60 crore doses of Covishield while it has ordered 1.01crore doses at Rs 200 per dose. The Hindustan Lifecare Limited(HLL) will buy the vaccines from SII and Bharat Biotech.
Both Covishield and Covaxin are two dose vaccines thatwill be administered at a 28 days gap. The government in its report has saidthat 30 Crore people will be administered the vaccine in the first go.