According to the CEO of the Serum Institute of India, Adar Poonawalla, the US and European nations (Western) are withholding critical raw materials essential to manufacture the vaccine to produce the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covishield inoculation, India Today has reported.
Poonawalla said, “We have not banned exports, we have prioritised our country for the next two months, whereas Europe and the US have banned the exports of raw materials and vaccines…US needs to have a global perspective and not ban raw materials”,.
“By banning certain raw materials, companies like SII and many others will not be able to scale up to the extent we would want to. Fortunately, the ban of raw materials is not affecting Covishield but it is affecting Covovax, the Novavax candidate, which I am hoping to stockpile from next week”, he added.
Covovax is the second Covid-19 vaccine which SII is working on and hopes to get a license for it by September-October.
As per an Indian Express report, some of the raw raw materials that are required are plastic bags, filters and certain media which are used in the manufacturing process of Covovax.
Since the West has placed an embargo on the raw material SII’s capacity to manufacture the vaccine has slowed down, however, it aims to make 1 billion doses of the vaccine Novavax this year.
“That is one thing we are really struggling with in the short term because we need this now. We don’t need it after six months or a year because by that time, we’d have developed other suppliers”, Poonawalla was quoted as saying.
Poonawalla has also expressed confidence that both Covovax and Covishield have over 95 per cent efficacy against hospitalisation, and that would lead to less number of patients needing hospitalisation as most will only experience mild symptoms.
SII is currently producing 6 to 6.5 crore Covishield vaccines per month and hopes to almost double it to 10 to 11 crore by June.