Covishield pricing whips up a political storm
April 22, 2021
The concerns are over vaccine equity and that some States would get left behind. Serum Institute of India (SII) chief executive Adar Poonawalla has stirred a hornet’s nest, politically, with the pricing structure he recently announced for Covishield vaccine.
A day after SII announced that Covishield would be priced at ₹400/dose for States and ₹600/dose for private hospitals, key political voices, including Congress President Sonia Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and DMK leader MK Stalin, have been raised against the “differential pricing mechanism”. The concern was over vaccine equity, and whether some States would get left behind.