The chief executive of the Indian pharmaceutical giant, which dozens of countries count on to supply them with Covid-19 vaccines, said on Sunday that deliveries could be delayed because they were “targeted” to meet domestic needs before export orders.
“Dear countries and governments,” wrote the executive, Adar Poonawalla of the Serum Institute of India, in a tweet where he warned about delays. “I humbly ask you to be patient,” he wrote, adding that his company was guided to prioritize “India’s enormous needs and thereby balance the needs of the rest of the world. We are trying our best. ”
He did not say who issued the directive, and the Serum Institute did not immediately return requests for comment.
India produces three-fifths of the world’s supply of all types of vaccines, and the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, launched one of the largest and most ambitious vaccination campaigns in the world, with the goal of inoculating 1.3 billion Indians .
But while the country already operates a major immunization program, administering about 390 million vaccines against diseases such as measles and tuberculosis in one year, India is struggling to obtain Covid vaccines for the population. Less than 1 percent of Indians have been vaccinated since mid-January. The pandemic has caused at least 10.9 million coronavirus infections known in India so far, more than in any other country except the United States.
The country’s regulators approved two vaccines: one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University and produced by the Serum Institute, and another – still in tests – developed by the National Institute of Virology with Bharat Biotech, a local pharmaceutical company that will make the doses.
The Serum Institute will also make doses of a vaccine developed by Novovax as soon as it is approved.
In addition to helping supply India and other customers, the company is expected to produce hundreds of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and more than a billion Novovax vaccines to be distributed through the global Covax vaccination initiative, which aims to ensure that 92 vaccines low and medium – income countries receive vaccines at the same time as the 98 richest countries in the world. Covax did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Poonawalla’s warning that foreign countries would have to wait for vaccines.
Many developing countries want the AstraZeneca vaccine because it is much cheaper and easier to store and transport than other Covid vaccines currently in use. This also makes it suitable for India’s vast vaccination campaign, which must range from the high mountains of the Himalayas to the dense jungles of southern India.
The Indian government has increasingly used the country’s vaccine manufacturing capacity as the currency of its international diplomacy, in competition with China, which has made dose distribution a central element of its external relations. Last week, for example, India promised to donate 200,000 doses of vaccine to United Nations peacekeepers worldwide.