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Fire at world's largest vaccine producer in India kills five
A fire broke out at a Serum Institute of India (SII) building, the world's largest vaccine producer, in the western city of Pune in India on Thursday, 21 January 2021, killing five people. The fire broke out at 14h45 local time at Manjari, a cluster of new buildings being built to enhance SII's manufacturing capability, a short drive away from the facility where COVID vaccines are being manufactured. It quickly spread across two floors of the building and several people were evacuated. An official at the local fire station reported that seven fire engines were on scene. Fire official Prashant Ranpise said the cause of the fire was not immediately clear but it was contained to a facility under construction to boost production of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. The chief executive of SII said production of vaccines against Covid-19 would not be affected and the fire has now been brought under control. Murlidhar Mohol, mayor of the city of Pune in western India where the site is located, said late on Thursday that five bodies had been recovered from the rubble after fire fighters had extinguished the blaze.
"We have just received some distressing updates; upon further investigation we have learnt that there has unfortunately been some loss of life at the incident," the Serum Institute's CEO, Adar Poonawalla, said. Poonawalla said there would be no impact on the production of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, known locally as Covishield, "due to multiple production buildings that I had kept in reserve to deal with such contingencies". Covishield is one of two vaccines approved by the Indian Government for use in its inoculation programme, which began last week and is the largest in the world. The country aims to vaccinate 300 million people by early August. Many other low and middle-income countries are also depending on the Serum Institute for production of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. India has recorded the second-highest number of COVID-19 infections in the world after the US. Since the pandemic began it has confirmed more than 10,6 million cases and almost 153 000 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. Sources: BBC, The Independent |
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