- Saturday, March 01, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
With India experiencing a fresh rise in Covid-19 infections in months, the Serum Institute of India (SII) has said that it would restart manufacturing the Covishield vaccine to provide additional boosters and produce six to seven million extra doses to build up the country’s stock, The Guardian reported.
The Covishield vaccine is known as Oxford/AstraZeneca in the UK.
The rise in cases in India has reportedly been caused by a new variant, with almost 8,000 new cases reported on Wednesday (12).
The new variant XBB.1.16 was first detected in India in January and is believed to be more transmissible than the earlier variants. However, there appears to be no higher severity or risk of hospitalisation than the previous variants, with most people reporting mild symptoms.
Mock drills were conducted in hospitals while some states brought back mask mandates over concerns with more than 40,000 active cases across India, the highest since last year.
According to the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the rise was also because of complacent behaviour, including less usage of masks in public spaces.
“Many people lowered their guard against coronavirus, and the low rate of testing could be the driving force behind the surge,” the body was quoted as saying by the news outlet.
“Rising cases reflect that Covid has not gone, it is still around, and so we need to take precautions.”
This week, the Indian health ministry started a mock drill in hospitals to check on the arrangements for treating Covid patients. During the second wave of Covid that hit India in March 2021, hospitals in the country were overwhelmed with massive shortages of beds, medicines and oxygen, resulting in a large number of deaths.
