HMD ships over 56m syringes to Covax facility | Economic Times

NEW DELHI: Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices (HMD), one of the largest suppliers of syringes, has sent its first shipment of 56 million pieces of auto disable syringes to Covax facility as the race for safe and effective vaccine continues.The Covax facility, which seeks to pool in resources to accelerate the development of the promising vaccine candidates for Covid-19 that will be made accessible to all the participating countries, has ordered 140 million pieces to be supplied between August and December.“We have shipped out more than 56 million pieces of 5 ml auto disabled (AD) syringes for intra muscular syringes,” said Rajiv Nath, managing director of Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices, while the company awaits the Indian government’s advisory on the procurement of syringes for vaccination.In the last few days demand has come forward from other countries like Japan and US for disposable syringes and Indonesia for auto disposable syringes as the countries start to stockpile. The company has even scaled up its production capacity to one billion from 700 syringes a year.However, Indian government is yet to make a move. “We plan to allocate 50% of the total for the government of India and 50% for export as we have got a global responsibility. But there is no clarity so far from the government as yet,” added Nath.