As many as 10 fire tenders were rushed to the Serum Institute of India (SII) in Maharashtra’s Pune on Thursday where millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine are being manufactured.
According to the officials, a fire broke out at Terminal 1 gate and the fire continues to rage at the fourth and fifth floors of SEZ3 building inside Terminal Gate 1. The site where the fire broke out, is an under-construction building at SII. The vaccine and vaccine manufacturing plant are safe.
Sources told ANI: “Fire in the Serum Institute of India has happened at the Manjari plant. It is not going to affect Covidshield vaccine production.”
It may be noted that the country’s apex drugs regulator had granted restricted emergency use permission to SII’s Covishield vaccine in India.
Millions of vaccine doses are being manufactured by Serum Institute under technical collaboration with Oxford University/Astra Zeneca. It is pertinent to note that COVISHIELD (SII-ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) vaccine contains the replication-deficient simian adenovirus vector ChAdOx1, containing the structural surface glycoprotein (Spike protein) antigens of SARS-CoV-2.
