By Devjyot Ghoshal
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The Sorum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines by volume, asked on Sunday for the patience of foreign governments awaiting their supply of COVID-19 injections, saying it was directed to prioritize the needs of India.
“… I humbly ask you to be patient,” SII Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said in a tweet https://twitter.com/adarpoonawalla/status/1363346341275967488, adding that the company “was directed to prioritize the huge needs of India and in conjunction with that balance the needs of the rest of the world. “
“We are doing our best,” said Poonawalla.
Headquartered in the western Indian city of Pune, the company is manufacturing the Oxford University / AstraZeneca vaccine COVID-19, one of two vaccines that India is using to initially vaccinate around 300 million people as part of a national campaign inoculation.
Many low- and middle-income countries, from Bangladesh to Brazil, depend on SII’s AstraZeneca vaccine, under the Indian company’s COVISHIELD brand.
But demand is growing, including from western countries like Canada, where Poonawalla has promised to deliver the COVISHIELD vaccine next month.
Britain’s drug regulator is also auditing manufacturing processes at the SII, potentially paving the way for the COVISHIELD vaccine to be shipped from there to the UK and other countries.
The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been criticized for the slow launch of his vaccination campaign, but health officials are preparing to expand the number of vaccines substantially in the coming weeks.
India has vaccinated about 11 million people since mid-January.
With more than 10.9 million confirmed infections, India has the second highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world, behind the United States.
The country is currently reporting about 12,000 new infections on average each day, a fraction of the peak since last September, according to an analysis by Reuters.
But federal health officials said on Sunday that they wrote to some states that they are seeing an increase in the number of cases, asking them to improve the general testing, surveillance and monitoring of COVID-19 mutations.
(Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)