[Temporary hold put on exports of vaccines by Serum Institute of India to meet demand at home]
By Peter
Beaumont
The move, first reported by
Reuters, will affect supplies to the Gavi/WHO-backed Covax vaccine-sharing
facility through which more than 180 countries are expected to get doses, one
of the sources said.
The UK has received only half of
the 10m doses it ordered from the SII, leading to warnings that its vaccination
programme may have to slow. The UK is also facing threats of tighter export
controls from the EU on doses produced there.
The reported Indian decision is the
latest twist in the increasingly tangled and sometimes murky story of the SII’s
involvement in the manufacture of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
There has been a lack of
transparency over issues with the institute’s priorities for supply, as well as
issues with production, which have emerged in leaks, anonymous briefings and
sometimes contradictory statements.
There appear to have been no
vaccine exports from India since last Thursday, according to the foreign
ministry’s website, as the country expands its own immunisation effort.
“Everything else has taken a
backseat, for the time being at least,” one of the sources told Reuters. “No
exports, nothing till the time the India situation stabilises. The government
won’t take such a big chance at the moment when so many need to be vaccinated
in India.”
Both sources had direct knowledge
of the matter but declined to be named as the discussions are not public.
India’s foreign ministry and SII,
the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, did not immediately reply to requests
for comment..
India has detected a “double mutant
variant” of the coronavirus in 206 samples in the worst-hit western state of
Maharashtra, a senior government official said on Wednesday.
The variant was also detected in
nine samples in the capital, Delhi, the director of the National Centre for
Disease Control, Sujeet Kumar Singh, told a news conference.
In recent days, India has been
moving to step up its so far sluggish coronavirus vaccine programme. This week
SII told Brazil, Morocco and Saudi Arabia that further supplies of the
Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine would be delayed, according
to the Times of India, citing a letter from the institute’s president.
Adar
Poonawalla, the company’s 40-year-old chief executive, is said to have
written to Brazil to say that “regrettably” a January fire at
one of its manufacturing facilities had “caused obstacles” and the institute
would not be able to fulfil its commitments. Similar communications were sent
to Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
Last month Poonawalla tweeted that
the institute “has been directed to prioritise the huge needs of India and
along with that balance the needs of the rest of the world. We are trying our
best.”
Initially, Poonawalla had boasted
of producing 1.5bn doses by the end of the year, predicting that his company
could initially produce between 40-50% of the world’s supply.
The SII has partnerships with
AstraZeneca, the Gates Foundation and the Gavi vaccine alliance to make up to
1bn doses for poorer countries.
However, Covax has so far received
17.7m AstraZeneca doses from SII, of the 60.5m doses India has shipped in
total.
Boris Johnson sent his close ally
Sir Eddie Lister to India as part of the UK government’s efforts to secure
millions of doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.
India’s programme of “vaccine
maitri” (vaccine friendship), in which it has sold or given away more
coronavirus vaccines than it has administered at home, has been praised by some
locally as a diplomatic success.
However, with the country reporting
the most number of coronavirus infections after the US and Brazil, the government has
also been criticised for exporting precious supplies. India is in
the midst of a second surge in cases, taking its total to about 11.6 million.
