India will likely take at least three to four months to complete Covid-19 vaccination efforts for frontline workers and people over 60 or with underlying health problems, said the executive director of the Serum Institute of India at Thursday.
In January, the South Asian country launched the world’s largest vaccination campaign for some 300 million people out of a massive population of 1.3 billion. As of Wednesday night, more than 36 million people were vaccinated according to data from the Ministry of Health of India.
“The number of doses needed in India is huge,” Suresh Jadhav told CNBC’s “Capital Connection”, adding that the vaccination program is a gigantic task impossible to complete in a short period of time.
“At a speed of about 50 (million) to 60 million doses per month, this program will continue and they will cover this population of 300 million in about three to four months,” he said.
This week Jadhav attended the Asian Development Bank’s 2021 Southeast Asia Development Symposium.
The Serum Institute, based in Pune, India, has emerged as a crucial player in Covid’s vaccination efforts, both in India and around the world. It is the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world by volume and is manufacturing the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the Swedish-British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, known locally as Covishield.
It provided millions of doses to the Indian government and also to Covax, a global vaccination initiative led by the World Health Organization and others to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines in less wealthy countries.
An external view of the Serum Institute of India Unip. Ltd. which is producing the Covid-19 vaccine in Hadapsar on November 23, 2020 in Pune, India.
Pratham Gokhale | Hindustan Times | Getty Images
Responding to the growing demand for its Covid vaccine, Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla last month asked foreign governments to be patient and said that, without further explanation, the company was directed to meet domestic demand first.
Jadhav explained that the Serum Institute is able to fulfill current requests made by the Indian government and said that it has already supplied around 59 million doses to Covax. He added that the Serum Institute plans to expand its capacity by the end of April or early May, when it plans to increase production by another 40 million to 50 million doses.
Currently, the Serum Institute can produce more than 70 million doses per month.
Last week, the United States, Japan and Australia pledged to help Indian companies expand their Covid vaccine production capabilities and deliver more doses to the global supply pool.
India is also using a vaccine developed locally by Bharat Biotech that was created in collaboration with the state-run Indian Medical Research Council.