The United Kingdom’s vaccination efforts will be paralysed from next month because the Indian government is temporarily holding exports, according to the CEO of the Serum Institute of India (SII), Adar Poonawalla, whose company is manufacturing the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine.
“It is solely dependent on India and it has nothing to do with the SII. It is to do with the Indian government allowing more doses to the UK,” Mr Poonawalla told the Telegraph, who confirmed that five million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine had already been delivered to the UK in early March.
The second batch of five million further doses that the SII has pledged to the UK will only be delivered once the company is given the green light by New Delhi, which is deliberating how to slow a concerning resurgence in new daily Covid-19 cases, according to a source.
In addition to debating whether to implement new localised lockdowns, the Indian government is considering whether it needs to stockpile more vaccines to expand its vaccination programme, which has so far been limited to those over the age of 60 and those over the age of 45 with comorbidities.
British MPs’ criticism of the Indian government’s alleged use of force against peacefully protesting farmers was not behind the delay, according to a source, with exports to other countries also being held.
The SII would still commit to delivering the remaining five million doses as soon as possible, a source told the Telegraph, and this commitment would not “take months.”
“There was never a commitment to supplying doses to the UK in any stipulated time. We just said we will offer our help,” said Mr Poonawalla.
Mr Poonawalla earlier this year warned that the SII’s vaccine exports would depend on its evolving domestic commitments in India.
“The real challenge now is rolling it out to all the countries worldwide but also balancing our commitments domestically and understanding what my government [India] wants us to do. It’s a fine balance,” said Mr Poonawalla, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in January.
The SII was waiting for a directive from a “cautious” Indian government and did not want to anger New Delhi, which was requesting more vaccine doses than the SII had initially allocated, according to an interview Mr Poonawalla gave to Bloomberg on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, India recorded 35,871 new infections, its highest number since early December, amid fears of a second wave in a country that has already struggled to contain the world’s second-highest caseload.
Two-thirds of new cases are being reported in the state of Maharashtra, home to the densely-populated cities of Mumbai and Pune. In March 2020, India’s outbreak first took hold in its megacities of Mumbai and Delhi before spreading nationwide.
There are concerns the recent surge could be caused by three deadlier and more contagious mutant strains of Covid-19, first found in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa, with 158 out of the 400 confirmed cases of these variants reported over the past two weeks.
India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under increasing domestic pressure to take decisive action to slow the recent surge.
Approximately 400 million Indians were pushed further into poverty by the pandemic last year, according to the International Labour Organisation, and the economy is only beginning to show signs of recovery.
Public health experts are calling on New Delhi to open up its vaccination programme, so far limited to those over the age of 60 and those over the age of 45 with comorbidities, to the entire public to combat rising cases.
This would require India, which has so far spearheaded the global Covid-19 vaccination drive by exporting 59 million doses to 66 countries, to stockpile more doses domestically to rapidly reach its 1.38 billion citizens.
On Wednesday, Mr Poonawalla revealed that the Indian government was already requesting more vaccine doses than the SII had initially allocated.
“We had to dedicate a lot of our capacity, which was not originally planned for India. We’re trying to balance it out as much as possible, but again for the first few months we have been directed to prioritize supplies to India and certain other countries that have a high disease burden,” said Mr Poonawalla, in an interview with Bloomberg.
Source : The Telegraph. Agency has contacted the Indian ministry of health for comment.
