Bengaluru: Manipal Hospitals, India’s second largest multi-speciality hospital chain, announced collaboration with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories to add the Sputnik V vaccine pilot in its existing vaccine portfolio that comprises of Covishield and Covaxin.

Speaking on the occasion, Karthik Rajagopal, COO, Manipal Health Enterprises Pvt. Ltd., said: “Manipal Hospitals has worked closely with Dr. Reddy’s to create the state-of-the-art infrastructure to maintain Sputnik V vaccine. The hospital chain has successfully conducted vaccination drives with Covishield and Covexin across the country till date and will continue the efforts along with the new addition of Sputnik V. We are expecting the vaccine to be available for the public soon in the latter half of the month.”

Addressing the need of the hour especially with the first batch of the Sputnik V vaccine directly transported from Russia, Manipal Hospitals has invested in creating a robust cold chain storage infrastructure as the vaccine needs to be stored in minus 18 degree centigrade. 

Manipal Hospitals and Dr. Reddy’s took extensive efforts to ensure stringent cold chain maintenance as per the required guidelines for the vaccine. The cold chain storage even has a real-time logger which records the temperature every second.

According to a press release here today (June 6), M.V. Ramana, CEO, Branded Markets (India & Emerging Markets), Dr. Reddy’s, said: “We are pleased to collaborate with Manipal Hospital in Bengaluru as we scale up our soft pilot launch of the Sputnik V vaccine in India and extend it to more cities ahead of the commercial launch later in June. In the upcoming months we hope to inoculate as many Indians as possible.”