The country’s largest vaccine maker, Serum Institute of India (SII), has ramped up production of AstraZeneca Covid-19 shot, aiming to have 100 million doses ready by December for an inoculation drive that could begin across India.
The vaccine-maker has already administered 1,600 volunteers with doses of Oxford University-AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine Covishield and kept them under observation for next 28 days.
Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer of the SII said, “If final-stage trial data shows AstraZeneca’s candidate gives effective protection from the virus, the Serum Institute of India Ltd, which is partnered to produce at least one billion doses, may get emergency authorisation from New Delhi by December.” That initial amount will go to India, Poonawalla told a news agency.
A full approval early next year will allow distribution on a 50-50 basis with the South Asian nation and Covax, the World Health Organization-backed body that’s purchasing shots for poor nations. SII, which has tied up with five developers, has so far made 40 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine in the past two months and aims to start manufacturing Novavax’s contender soon.
“We were a bit concerned it was a big risk,” said Poonawalla. But both AstraZeneca-Oxford University and Novavax’s shots “are looking pretty good.”
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot has said he is preparing for the possibility of large-scale vaccinations as early as December and once the UK grants its own emergency license, SII will submit same data to Indian counterparts.
Drugmakers are just now getting data that will show how well their vaccine candidates work, but there are plenty of hurdles remaining as the global race to find an effective shot against the pathogen reaches its final stages. Astra and co-developer University of Oxford still need to see testing results. And even if their vaccine proves effective and gets a nod from regulators, there are questions over how the shot can be distributed.
Poonawalla reiterated that it will take until 2024 to vaccinate the entire world and two years to see a real reduction in infections, due to affordability and manufacturing hurdles.
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100mn Covid-19 shots by Dec in India
After talks with the Government, Poonawalla said he is confident in their plans to get initial vaccines to the vulnerable and frontline workers. The challenge will be in getting it to India’s 1.3 billion population, especially in the vast countryside where past inoculation drives have struggled due to patchy health networks.
He said AstraZeneca has a significant edge over a rival candidate from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, which this week grabbed headlines after indicating it was more than 90 per cent effective in stopping Covid-19 infections. Expensive cold-chain infrastructure is needed to transport and store that vaccine at -70 degrees Celsius. Poonawalla said it was “just impossible” for most of the world to use at scale, compared to those his company will produce that can be stored at fridge temperatures.
“I don’t think even 90 per cent of the countries will be able to take it, because you just don’t have deep freezers everywhere,” he said of the Pfizer shot. “In a pandemic, always remember that simplicity is the key.”