The Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, expects New Delhi to ease restrictions on its Covid-19 jab exports in about two months, as the country’s inoculation programme gains momentum.
India, after a faltering start, is administering an average of 6.8m vaccines a day, up from around 4m per day in July.
“We are coming very close to a point where there is more than enough vaccine stock,” Adar Poonawalla, SII’s chief executive, told reporters on Friday.
As India’s Covid-19 case numbers have fallen, and as supply constraints have eased, the country is expected to allow exports to resume at a gradual pace in the months ahead. The restrictions have angered some neighbours and many African countries, which had been counting on the jabs.
“In the next two months, we expect slow easement of exports,” Poonawalla said. “The Indian government, rightly, is being very cautious and calculated in managing the vaccine stocks.”
He criticised wealthy countries planning to administer Covid-19 booster shots amid a global shortage and while many developing countries struggle with access to vaccines.
“It’s unethical to start giving three doses to everybody when some people in some countries have not gotten even two,” he said.
After a slow start, India’s Covid-19 vaccine drive has accelerated significantly, with more than 777m doses — or around 56 for every hundred residents — being administered. More than 42 per cent of Indians have received a single dose, while over 14 per cent are fully vaccinated.
Most of those who have not had a single shot are below age 18, and not yet eligible for a jab.
The vaccine maker, which has the rights to make the Oxford/AstraZeneca shot, is producing 160m Covid-19 vaccine doses a month, and expects to increase to 200m doses a month in October provided supplies of raw materials hold steady.
India exported around 66m Covid vaccines — as gifts to neighbours and as commercial sales to the developing world — in the first few months of the year.
But as the country was hit by a wave of cases as the highly infectious Delta variant spread, New Delhi put the brakes on vaccine exports as its citizens complained about a shortage at home.
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