India’s vaccine shortage will last for months, the largest manufacturer warns

The executive director of India’s Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker, has warned that the shortage of punctures will persist for months after the Narendra Modi government prepares for a devastating second wave of coronaviruses.

Adar Poonawalla told the Financial Times that India’s severe vaccine shortage would continue until July, when production is expected to go from doses of about 60 to 70 million a month to 100 million.

Poonawalla said the government “took it easy” in January, when new coronavirus cases had dwindled. “Everyone felt that India had started to change the pandemic,” he said.

But India has been hit by the latest wave of infections, which has registered 400,000 new cases on Sunday and several cities and states are closed, including the capital New Delhi.

Prime Minister Modi has been accused of complacency and prioritizing domestic policy over the health crisis after allowing massive election rallies and the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious festival that attracts millions of people, although infections are rising sharply.

India has vaccinated less than 2% of its population, and many states reported no beatings, forcing them to withdraw plans on Saturday to extend the inoculation campaign to all over-18s.

Poonawalla said the Serum Institute had been denigrated by politicians and critics for the shortage of vaccines, noting that the government, not the company, was responsible for the policy. The company has also been sued for charging state governments and hospitals higher prices than those offered to the central government. Poonawalla lowered prices after criticism.

“I’ve been a victim of a very unfair and erroneous way,” he said, adding that he hadn’t increased capacity before because “there were no orders, we didn’t think we needed to do more than a billion doses a year.”

New Delhi requested 21 million vaccines from the Serum Institute, which manufactures the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine and will supply the vast majority of the country’s doses by the end of February, but gave no indication of when it would buy more. Additional doses of 110 m were requested in March when infections began to rise sharply.

The government last month advanced a loan to the company to help it convert a production line to make more vaccines.

“We just did this right now to deal with the ridiculous scarcity the nation has and obviously now even the world,” Poonawalla said.

The government in April too launched an impulse to secure more hits of foreign suppliers. He granted emergency approval to Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and said he would do the same for those approved in the US, UK, Europe or Japan.

However, local manufacturers who have partnered with Sputnik V say they are months away from distributing it nationwide.

Experts say the government should have invested in manufacturing capacity and acquired enough vaccines before the pandemic.

“It is absolutely essential that you have something to deliver, it is common sense,” said Chandrakant Lahariya, a New Delhi-based public health expert, adding that the government has not been transparent about its vaccination policy.

“There’s definitely not a lot of information in the public domain,” he said.

Poonawalla spoke with Financial Times in London, where he stayed with his wife and children before the UK imposed a ban on flights from India. He said he had received threats from politicians and businessmen demanding vaccines, but that he was not in London for security reasons. Last week, the Indian government provided Poonawalla with more security.

Poonawalla spoke to the Financial Times from London, where he joined his wife and children shortly before the UK imposed a ban on flights from India. He told the London Times that he had left the country in part because of unspecified “threats” from unnamed high-level politicians and business figures demanding access to vaccines. Last week, the Indian government provided Poonawalla with more security.

But he told the FT that he was not in London for security reasons and that he was there to do normal business, with plans to return to India the following week.

Overseas governments have sued the Serum Institute for failing to fulfill trade contracts after India froze vaccine exports In March.

Poonawalla said the company had begun “reimbursing” governments that had placed pre-orders but did not identify countries. “But I think if we don’t see a major change in two, three months, I think we’ll have problems.”