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No Fear No Favour

Shocking: Fire catches Serum Institute plant, 5 dead and 6 injured

A massive fire broke out on the fourth and fifth floors of Terminal-1 of the Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune. 5 people have died in the accident. One woman is also among the dead. 6 employees have been evacuated safely. The fire was in the BCG vaccine lab. When the search was carried out after overcoming the fire, 5 dead bodies were found in a burnt condition.

Pune Mayor Muralidhar Mohol told Bhaskar that the bodies were found on the upper floor. According to him, these people were laborers working in the plant. A search operation is currently going on at the plant. He said that the reason for the fire is not clear yet. Welding was going on in the building where there was a fire and this could also be the reason for the accident.

No damage to CoviShield vaccine production:

Earlier SII CEO Adar Poonawala said on social media that no one has died in the fire. Later, on receiving the information of the deaths, he expressed deep sorrow. He said that unfortunately, some people lost their lives in this accident. We are deeply saddened by this. He said that I want to assure the government and the people that CoviShield’s production has not suffered any loss due to this accident. We have prepared several production buildings to deal with such a situation.

Oxford-AstraZeneca’s CoveShield vaccine is produced at the SII Pune plant. However, the fire has caused no damage to the CoveShield vaccine. Pune Police Commissioner Amitabh Gupta said that the Manjari plant of SII caught fire. Production was not being done there at the moment, but there were complete preparations for it. The vaccine plant and storage are completely safe. CoviShield is made and stored in a separate part of the campus.

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