Some big hospitals in India have cancelled orders for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine as they struggle to sell COVID-19 shots amid surging supplies of free doses of other vaccines offered by the government.
Low demand and the extremely cold storage temperatures required have spurred at least three big hospitals to cancel orders for Sputnik V, sold only on the private market in the world's biggest vaccine-producing country.
"With storage and everything, we have cancelled our order for 2,500 doses," Jitendra Oswal, a senior medical official at Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College and Hospital in the western city of Pune, told Reuters.
"Demand is also not great. There is a class of people, barely 1 per cent, that wanted to go for Sputnik. For the rest, anything would do."
From May until last week, private hospitals accounted for just about 6 per cent of all vaccines administered in India, although the government had freed them to buy up to a quarter of domestic output, according to the health ministry data.
India is set to become a major production centre of Sputnik V, with planned capacity of about 850 million shots a year, and low domestic uptake could mean higher exports instead, a step backers are already pushing for. Indian companies have already started making Sputnik doses.?