Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India (SII), has reached out to US President Joe Biden on Twitter, urging him to lift the embargo on raw material exports from the US to enable vaccine companies outdoors the nation ramp up production.
Poonawalla on Friday tweeted, “if we are to truly unite in beating this virus, on behalf of the vaccine industry outside the U.S., I humbly request you to lift the embargo of raw material exports out of the U.S. so that vaccine production can ramp up. Your administration has the details.”
The US President has applied the US Defense Production Act to avert export of crucial components expected for vaccine production, such as gear, machinery and connected supplies, from the US. This was accomplished to speed up manufacturing in the US, allow Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer and Moderna to expedite delivery of doses to all US citizens above 18 years by May-finish. The US has currently administered 135 million doses and the new administration has set a target of vaccinating one more 200 million Americans in the very first one hundred days of the new administration.
Poonawalla has repeatedly been drawing interest to the US ban on export of essential raw components and warned that this could hurt the production in India. While Covishield production would not be impacted, Poonawalla has cautioned that the manufacturing of second Covid-19 vaccine that SII was working on with US corporation Novavax would be severely impacted. SII has began work on stockpiling Covovax vaccine.
SII has committed to make 1 billion doses of Covavax and the corporation has to provide 500 million doses of this globally by way of GAVI.
Novavax is carrying out Phase-III trials across the planet, and SII, as well, has began Phase-III trials in India. Novavax vaccine is anticipated to get Emergency Use Authorization in the second quarter of 2021. In anticipation of this approval, SII has began manufacturing Covavax at its Pune facility. Poonawalla has mentioned the Covovax could be launched in September, but these plans could be impacted if the US continued to hoard raw components and ban the exports.
Ban on exports of consumables such as filters, bags and cell culture media and adjuvant are hampering production. SII presently has capacity to make 70 million doses and is attempting to ramp it up to one hundred million by June-July. India’s other primary vaccine maker, Bharat Biotech, has also been facing raw material shortage and is unable to improve production from 5 to 12 million doses.
Apart from raw material shortage, the vaccine makers are also in search of funding help from the Government of India. SII has sought Rs 3,000-crore funding in the type of grants from the government to improve its production capacity beyond one hundred million doses a month.