Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices (HMD), one of the largest manufacturers of disposable syringes in the world and the largest for auto disable syringes who is scaling up production to a billion in the first half of 2021 as India gets ready for COVID-19 vaccine, has sent its first shipment of 56 million pieces of KOJAK auto disable syringes to Covax facility as the race for a 'safe and effective' vaccine against coronavirus infection is on the horizon.

The Covax facility working for global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines which is a pooled procurement mechanism for new COVID-19 vaccines, through which COVAX will ensure fair and equitable access to vaccines for each participating economy has ordered 140 million KOJAK AD Syringes from HMD to be supplied between August and December 2020.

“We have shipped out more than 56 million pieces of 5 ml auto disabled (AD) syringes for intra muscular syringes to Covax facility and will soon send the next shipment of 28 million Syringes by October end” said Rajiv Nath, Managing Director of Hindustan Syringes & Medical Devices, New Delhi.

While HMD is all geared up to meet the syringe demands, they are still waiting on the Indian government to start creating a stockpile of syringes as being done by other countries.

“Should the government need 100 million KOJAK Auto-Disable Syringes for Covid-19 vaccines by the end of this year, we can easily offer them to lift the outstanding orders placed with us. However, Indian government is yet to make a move or ordering though they have started consulting manufacturers for spare capacity availability beyond the standard immunization programme. We plan to allocate 50% of the total 0.5 ML AD Syringes produced for the government of India and 50% for export as we have got a global responsibility too. But we would appreciate a clarity from the government soon,” added Nath.

Gavi is co-leading COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator. This involves coordinating the COVAX Facility, a global risk-sharing mechanism for pooled procurement and equitable distribution of eventual COVID-19 vaccines.