Five people died in a fire at the facilities of the world’s largest vaccine producer in western India.
The fire started in a building that was still under construction on the premises of the Serum Institute of India in Pune on Thursday afternoon.
Filming showed thick clouds of smoke coming out of a building on the company’s large website.
The company said production of the vaccine would not be affected. The cause of the fire was not identified.
The fire was subsequently controlled, but the mayor of the city confirmed that five people had died.
“We just received some worrying updates; after further investigation, we found that unfortunately there was some loss of life in the incident,” said Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla in a tweet.
“We are deeply saddened and offer our deepest condolences to the family of those who have left.”
Mr Poonawalla said there would be no impact on the production of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, known locally as Covishield, “due to the various production buildings I kept in reserve to deal with such contingencies”.
Covishield is one of two vaccines approved by the Indian government for use in its inoculation program, which started last week and is the largest in the world.
The country plans to vaccinate 300 million people by the beginning of August.
Many other low- and middle-income countries also depend on the Serum Institute for the production of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
India recorded the second highest number of Covid-19 infections in the world, after the USA. Since the start of the pandemic, it has confirmed more than 10.6 million cases and almost 153,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.