Sri Lanka will purchase 2 to 3 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from its Indian manufacturing company Serum Institute of India during the next two days.
India has sent 500,000 doses of free coronavirus vaccines to Srilanka and Lalith Weeratunga, the advisor to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said that purchasing from India will follow Thursday’s arrival of India’s free vaccines to Sri Lanka.
Indian Covishield vaccine is to arrive tomorrow at the Colombo International airport and the consignment will be accepted by President Rajapaksa.
A total of 250,000 people, mostly health frontline workers, members of the security forces and police and the vulnerable aged, will get the vaccine on a priority basis.
India is one of the world’s biggest drug makers and an increasing number of countries have already approached it for procuring the coronavirus vaccines. In the last few days, India has sent consignments of domestically produced coronavirus vaccines under grant assistance to Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Mauritius and Seychelles.
India is also undertaking commercial supplies of the doses to a number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Brazil and Morocco.
