A major fire broke out on Thursday inside the sprawling complex of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
Images from Reuters’ partner ANI showed smoke coming out of a building in the huge SII complex in the city of Pune, in the southern state of Maharashtra.
“Thank you all for your concern and prayers,” SII CEO Adar Poonawalla said on Twitter. “So far, the most important thing is that there has been no loss of life or serious injury due to the fire, even though some floors have been destroyed.”
He added in a later tweet: “I would like to reassure all governments and the public that there would be no loss of production from #COVISHIELD due to several production buildings that I kept in reserve to deal with such contingencies at @SerumInstIndia.”
The company is producing about 50 million doses a month of a vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca at other facilities in the complex.
Officials said at least five fire trucks were dispatched to fight the fire in the building, which a source described to Reuters as a “vaccine factory under construction”.
No injuries were reported and there was no immediate word on the cause of the fire.
Poonawalla told the Associated Press last month that the SII expects to increase production capacity from 1.5 billion doses to 2.5 billion doses per year by the end of 2021.
Of the more than 12 billion doses to be produced this year, rich countries have already bought around 9 billion and many have options to buy even more.