Following the central government’s announcement of an Rs. 4,500 crore aid to the vaccine manufacturers to accelerate the production of the same, Adar Poonawalla of the Serum Institute of India has said that the firm borrowed money from the banks to put in motion its production and dint wait for the government announced amount to reach them.
As per the Centre’s announcement of yesterday, Rs. 3,000 crore will be given to the makes of Covishield and Rs. 1,500 crore to the Covaxin manufacturers. With this, the country will also begin inoculating citizens above the age of 18 years from May 1st.
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According to the latest development, the pricing of Covishield for this duration is set at Rs. 400 per shot to the states and Rs. 600 per dose to privately functioning hospitals. There will be no change in the Centre’s procurement pricing of the vaccine as it will get Covishield at Rs. 150 per dose, Serum Institute of India said.
For the mass inoculation to begin in less than 10 days, almost 2 million more doses of the vaccine will be required every month. Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of SII, said that he is expecting to supply 100 million doses of the vaccine each month after July as the production has stepped up.
In an interview with NDTV, he said, “The ₹ 3,000 crore amount we keep seeing in the media has been sanctioned. We believe it will come to us very soon. We have not waited but borrowed from the banks to get on with the ramp-up, with the assumption that this funding from the government will reach us very soon…this week.”
Given the alleged shortage of vaccines and the evident steep surge in the covid cases, the central government has halted shipping vaccines to other countries- a part of the “Vaccine Maitri” programme where PM Modi wanted to export vaccines to different nations. The same will remain paused till July at the least, Mr Poonawalla said.
“There is no clarity on exports and we also right now feel that we should not look at exports for two months during these cases. Maybe in June-July, we could start looking at small exports starting again. Right now, we are going to prioritise the needs of the nation first,” he said.
Urging to lift the restrictions placed on the export of raw materials, he recently contacted the US President Joe Biden through a tweet as the materials are required to produce vaccines in India.
“The US government responded through the media. We’ve seen reports of them saying they acknowledge and understand the issue. They are looking into it but (there is) no opening up as yet for the raw materials that they know very well exactly that are required…,” he said.
Though this won’t affect the manufacture or pricing of Covishield in India, it will show its impact on the production of Covovax, which is the SII’s version of a protein-based covid vaccine made by Novavax, the SII CEO said.
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“No, this will not affect our price because we can find alternative suppliers to the US, but that is just taking more time. And that will affect the stockpiling of Covovax, not Covishield, luckily,” he said.
Covavax is likely to enter the Indian market within the next 3 months, he added.
