The Serum Institute of India (SII) may have at least 40 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine — set to receive the drug comptroller’s nod for rollout soon — ready to ship in its stockpiles, which may help the country catch up with others who started their inoculation drives weeks ago.
India also has the cold chain equipment required to maintain the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, named Covishield, which could ensure a quick start of vaccination, sources told Hindustan Times.
The largest vaccine maker of India has at least 75 million doses of the vaccine and will have close to 100 million doses by the end of this week, Umesh Shaligram, director of R&D at SII said on Thursday.
“Nobody across the world has so much stock and we can start supplying as soon as we get the approval,” he said.
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The institute will split its stock between India and the WHO initiative to distribute vaccines to low and middle-income countries, SII CEO Adar Poonawalla had said earlier this week.
“India is such a large country that we may end up giving a majority of those 50 million doses to India first,” Poonawalla said, adding that by March the production volume per month will go up to 100 million.
Covishield — the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India — has shown lower efficacy in its trials than the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines but its numbers are above global regulators’ 50 per cent threshold.
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The US, Britain, China and Israel are some of the countries that have vaccinated their citizens. China has administered close to 4.5 million doses of its indigenous vaccine, although none of the drug makers have furnished adequate proof about their efficiency.
The SII has the second-largest volume of another vaccine called Novavax, which may come in handy for India in the second half of this year. This candidate will furnish results in another few months.
Other vaccines in India include Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, which has projected an annual capacity of 300 million doses. Gujarat-based Zydus Cadila’s vaccine is yet to start phase-3 trials.
(With agency inputs)
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