The chief executive of the Indian pharmaceutical giant, which dozens of countries are counting on to provide them with Covid-19 vaccines, said on Sunday their deliveries could be delayed because it was “ directed. ” to meet domestic needs before export orders.
“Dear countries and governments,” wrote the executive, Adar Poonawalla of the Serum Institute of India, a tweet in which he warned of delays. “I humbly urge you to be patient,” he wrote, adding that his company was mandated to prioritize “India’s enormous needs and along with that balance the needs of the rest of the world. our best. ”
He did not say who issued the guideline, and the Serum Institute did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
India produces three-fifths of the world’s supply of vaccines of all kinds, and the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has launched one of the world’s largest and most ambitious vaccination campaigns, aiming to vaccinate India’s 1.3 billion people.
But while the country already has a massive immunization program, delivering about 390 million injections against diseases such as measles and tuberculosis in an average year, India is struggling to get Covid vaccinations into the population. Less than 1 percent of Indians have been vaccinated since mid-January. The pandemic has caused at least 10.9 million known coronavirus infections in India to date, more than in any other country except the United States.
The country’s regulators have approved two vaccines: one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University and produced by the Serum Institute, and another – still under testing – developed by the National Institute of Virology with Bharat Biotech, a local pharmaceutical company that provides the doses. will make.
The Serum Institute will also make doses of a vaccine developed by Novovax once approved.
In addition to helping 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 vaccination initiative Covax, which aims to reach 92 low and middle income countries receive vaccines at the same time as the 98 richer countries in the world. Covax did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Mr Poonawalla’s warning that foreign countries should wait for vaccines.
Many developing countries want the AstraZeneca vaccine because it is much cheaper and much easier to store and transport than other Covid vaccines in use today. That also makes it suitable for India’s extensive vaccination campaign, which should reach from the towering mountains of the Himalayas to the dense jungles of South India.
The Indian government has increasingly used the country’s production capacity as a currency for its international diplomacy, in competition with China, which has made the distribution of shots a central part of its foreign relations. Last week, for example, India pledged to donate 200,000 doses of vaccine to United Nations peacekeepers around the world.