Bharat Biotech's Covaxin to cost Rs 600 for states and Rs 1200 for private hospitals

"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," Bharat Biotech chairman and managing director Krishna M Ella said in the statement.

The company said Covaxin is an inactivated and highly purified vaccine, making manufacturing 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 company added.

India registered 3,46,786 fresh cases of Covid-19 and 2,624 fatalities in the past 24 hours, the highest single-day spike in terms of cases and deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic, according to the data updated by the Union Health Ministry on Saturday.

On Wednesday last, Serum Institute of India said in a statement that it would sell Covishield to state governments at Rs 400 and to private hospitals at s 600. However, it will continue to sell the vaccine to the Central government at Rs 150.

The new vaccination policy will increase the demand by nearly two million doses a month, according to media reports.

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