India at the heart of global efforts to produce Covid vaccines | World News

As the largest global supplier of pharmaceuticals and 60% producer of vaccines worldwide India For a long time known as the “Pharmacy of the World”.

With the enthusiastic hunting of the Covid-19 vaccine now gaining momentum, the country is becoming more and more strategic and strategic in the development, production, and ultimately future distribution of some possible Covid shots. It plays a central role.

With more than 7.5 million cases and about 115,000 deaths, India is also one of the most affected countries after the United States.

The Pune-based Indian Serum Institute has already signed a billion doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, which is considered a pioneer in vaccine racing. In anticipation of its success, it has already begun production of nearly 2 million samples of the vaccine and is conducting Phase 3 human clinical trials in thousands of patients across 15 Covid-19 hotspots in India. I will.

This week, the Indian Serum Institute said it was confident that the AstraZeneca vaccine would be ready by December and would be licensed for sale in India by March.

Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Indian Serum Institute, said he was “very optimistic” when multiple successful vaccines were imminent.

“A lot of the off-record data for many of these vaccines is very promising, and next year more than three or four vaccines will be successful soon,” Poonawalla said.

The Serum Institute, which also launched a human trial of the intranasal Covid vaccine this week, is running to produce the highly coveted vaccine, with about 200 vaccines being developed worldwide. It’s just one of the Indian companies. ..

Johnson and Johnson have signed a contract with Indian pharmaceutical company Biological E to give up to 500 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in Phase 3 clinical trials if successful.

Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company Bharat Biotech has signed a contract to produce a billion intranasal vaccines from the University of Washington, which is currently in clinical trials, and Indian pharmaceutical giant Dr Reddy’s has entered Phase 2 / in India, Russia. We have a contract to conduct 3 human trials. Produces the controversial Sputnik vaccine and then a dose of 100 m. In addition, at least 12 unique vaccines have been developed in India.

All of this puts India, and thus the southern part of the world, in an important strategic and powerful position, especially with respect to the distribution of vaccines to domestic and non-Western countries. “50% of the quantity we produce is stored for India and the rest is sent to low- and middle-income countries,” said Poonawalla of the Serum Institute.

Poonawalla will stop producing other vaccines for the US and Europe, including measles, mumps, rubella, and hepatitis B, to have the ability to produce hundreds of millions of promised Covid vaccines, but to develop Said it was still supplying. Country.

Mahima Datla, CEO of Biological E, which manufactures Johnson & Johnson vaccines, has taken a different approach, with the company working on a Covax vaccine partnership signed by 135 countries.

“We have not made any trade-off decisions between Indian vaccine needs and global organizations such as UNICEF,” said Datra. “So far, we are not obliged to reserve a certain amount of vaccine for India, but in the future there may be an output gap that may put us in that position.”

Ironically, India is one of the world’s largest producers of vaccines, but faces one of the world’s largest challenges of vaccination of 1.3 billion people.

India has very effective vaccination programs for infants and pregnant women, but nothing is done for the rest of the population, especially the elderly most vulnerable to the coronavirus. The already overburdened health care system has been pushed to the limit by pandemics in many regions, and swaths in rural India have little access to health care.

India, which suffers from extreme heat, is also refrigerated until the moment the vaccine is administered, and therefore lacks the proper cold chain facilities to ensure it is effective. Some vaccines under development need to be stored up to -70 ° C.

There is also a cost issue. The Serum Institute said it expects the vaccine to cost around $ 5 (£ 3.80). The Government of India aims to vaccinate 250 million people by July 2021, which means it will need to raise $ 1.25 billion to cover the costs.

“Indian complications will be staggering,” said Gagandeep Kang, a professor of microbiology in India who is a member of the WHO’s World Advisory Board on Vaccine Safety. “The main concern is the scale and follow-up, the fact that it is still unclear who vaccinated and how to know who did not, and the storage conditions required.”

Still, Kang said India has even more worrisome threats. It is a threat to a strong anti-vaccine movement that has already gained momentum in rural areas against measles, mumps and rubella vaccines over the past five years. Kang said he witnessed a wildfire conspiracy against the vaccine in a WhatsApp message written in the local language, which was very difficult to counter.

“I’m worried that the longer it takes for the Covid-19 vaccination program to roll out in India, the more anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and resistance we have to deal with,” Kang said. I am.