India’s Serum Institute is the largest manufacturer of vaccines in the world. Due to lack of orders, it has been left with half a million doses of Covishield jab. The company had to reduce production by half.
Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute, stated that his company faces a number of challenges. “dilemma”That it might have “never imagined to be in”During the pandemic.
Having fully vaccinated half of India’s eligible adults, the company is currently sitting on a stockpile of around 500 million doses of the locally-manufactured AstraZeneca Covid jab.
Covishield has accounted for 95% of India’s 1.3 billion vaccine doses. This allows India to quickly ramp up the rollout. The company is now close to finishing all domestic orders.
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“We have no other orders at hand. So I am going to be reducing the production by at least 50% to begin with on a monthly basis until orders again pick up either in India and the world,” Poonawalla stated.
This is despite concerns raised by the World Health Organization about vaccine inequalities in Africa. Their inability to obtain doses means that they are vulnerable to mutated Covid strains among their large unvaccinated population.
Over 160 global leaders called upon the Western countries to give their excess Covid vaccines away to less developed nations in order to increase worldwide protection against Covid.
The Serum Institute stopped vaccine exports in 2021 in order to speed up vaccinations in India. However, Covid jabs are still supplied by the Serum Institute to the Covax international distribution program. According to Poonawalla however, Covax orders are still being placed “very slow.”
Poonawalla was able to assert that slow vaccination in low- and middle-income countries wasn’t due to inability to get doses, but because of their poor infrastructure which limited their ability to disperse jabs.
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