HMD reaches milestone with 500 mn syringes for Covid vax

New Delhi, Oct 13 (IANS) Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices (HMD) has achieved a milestone with supplying 500 million 0.5 ml AD syringes to the government for the Covid vaccination programme.

The medical syringe major achieved the feat on October 11, the company said in a statement.

The next lot of 16.3 million syringes has been inspected and is ready to dispatch, it added.

In our endeavour "to ensure there is no shortage of syringes to help vaccinate India against Covid, HMD has preponed the supply commitments to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and has supplied 500 million pcs of KOJAK AD Syringes to GoI to help vaccinate over 685 million people," said Rajiv Nath, Managing Director of HMD, in the statement.

The company is also not accepting any export orders and has diverted the supply of 100 million pieces from an order for the UNICEF to the government from September to December, 2021.

The Central government, last week, put quantitative restrictions on export of syringes to boost their domestic availability and uptake.

Nath said the company "regrets that the Government has had to partly restrict exports. We all could have planned better", he noted.

From December 2020, HMD has so far received total govt orders of "753.10 million pcs of 0.5 ml Kojak AD Syringes".

"In addition HMD has been supplying most of the 1 ml/2 ml DispoVan and 0.5 ml/2 ml Kojak AD Syringes (approx 50 million syringes) being used in the private sector vaccination campaign. All orders received from December till date have been supplied on time or before time as committed." Nath said.

HMD is also on track to produce and supply outstanding orders of 310 million 0.5 ml KOJAK AD Syringes by January 2022.

"We feel humbled and honoured to contribute to the National vaccination campaign and Union Health Ministry's plans to celebrate India administering 1 billion Covid vaccine doses by October. The vaccine bullets need our guns. It is a huge responsibility," said Nath.

With the administration of 50,63,845 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India's Covid-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 96.43 crore as per provisional reports till 7 a.m. on Wednesday. This has been achieved through 94,26,400 sessions.