En route to administering 100 crore doses, India has used three vaccines under its Covid inoculation drive that began on January 16 – Covishield developed by AstraZeneca-Oxford University and mass-produced here by Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII), the indigenous Covaxin from Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, and Russian’s Sputnik V. All these are two-shot vaccines.
Covishield accounts for about 88% of the total jabs given so far. Covaxin, which once seemingly was about to get a significant production enhancement to match Covishield’s supply level, has failed to gather pace and is a distant second with just 11.44% of the share while Sputnik V is largely absent, accounting for just 0.10% of the doses, as revealed by vaccination data available on CoWIN.
Also Read: Coronavirus LIVE Updates: India Achieves Historic Milestone of 1 Billion Vaccines, Health Minister Congratulates Country
The initial monthly production capacity of SII for Covishield was around 7 crore doses while that of Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin was 1.25 crore doses. In May, both companies assured that they would considerably up their production capacity after the disastrous second Covid wave in India that saw its peak during the months of April and May with record-high cases and fatalities.
Also Read: India’s Journey to 100 Crore Covid Vaccine Doses and the Many Milestones along the Way
Driven by the fear of another pandemic wave, panic from the prevailing one, and inoculation being the only protective measure, the demand for Covid vaccines shot up all of a sudden and India was in no position to meet it with the existing production capacity of the two manufacturers. The country did try to import vaccines from abroad but failed as the current and future production capacity of the vaccines in demand was already booked with other nations.
Dr NK Arora, chairman of the Covid-19 working group under the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI), had in fact assured the nation that SII had increased its production capacity to 10-12 crore doses of Covishield by June-end and Bharat Biotech had also promised to scale up its supply of Covaxin to the same level by July-end. However, while Serum Institute effectively increased its production capacity first to 10 to 12 crore doses and now to 20 to 22 crore doses a month, Bharat Biotech failed to ramp up its delivery on the ground.
Also Read: India’s Billion Breakthrough: Six People Who Steered the World’s Largest Vaccination Drive
The annual production capacity of Bharat Biotech, initially, was 20 crore doses per year. In April, a statement from the company said that it had increased it to around 70 crore doses a year. It also assured that manufacturing partnership opportunities were being explored. Further, Bharat Biotech’s chairman and managing director Krishna Ella also assured the same month that by July-August, his company was expected to reach a production capacity of up to 80 crore doses annually. In July, going a step further, the company also added that it was setting up four plants to raise its production capacity to 100 crore doses a year.
Even the Government of India, in an affidavit before the Supreme Court, had projected that between August and December the country was expected to get 55 crore Covaxin doses from Bharat Biotech: that means around 10 crore doses a month.
Bharat Biotech’s botch-up
But Bharat Biotech failed to deliver and it was, in fact, a major reason why India could not achieve its July target as planned. According to the health ministry, the country received 2.5 crore doses of Covaxin in July and 3.5 crore each in August and September. The failure of Bharat Biotech to supply around 10-12 crore doses a month did not only result in bringing down the August target to vaccinate around 25 crore Indians but it also forced the government to miss its goal of vaccinating 51.6 crore individuals by July, says the Centre’s affidavit submitted before the SC.
The current Covaxin production capacity, even if ramped up, is around 5.5 crore doses a month, substantially lower than the 10 crore doses earlier expected.
SII and Covishield to the rescue
In August, the Government of India assured the nation that the availability of vaccines was not going to be a problem again and promised delivery of at least 136 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin between August and December: 25.65 crore doses in August, 26.15 crore in September, 28.25 crore in October, 28.25 crore doses in November, and 28.5 crore doses in December.
Out of the 136 crore doses, SII’s share is 115 crore or 84.55%.
The GOI note ‘Covid-19 Public Health Response Pro-active, Pre-emptive and Graded Response guided by Epidemiological and Scientific Rigour’ provided further clarity on the production capacity of these two vaccine makers. According to it, SII is expected to produce 173.4 crore doses of Covishield in 2021 that can fully vaccinate 86.7 crore individuals while 28.5 crore doses of Covaxin, vaccinating another 14.25 crore people, are expected to be manufactured by Bharat Biotech.
Sputnik V a non-starter
With just 10.46 lakh jabs so far, the Russian vaccine Sputnik V is a non-starter in India. The vaccine was given approval in April and the target was not to import the manufactured vaccine stockpiles available in Russia but to start its mass production in India, making the country its global production hub.
The same month, after an agreement with some Indian manufacturers, it was announced that Indian pharmaceutical companies were expected to produce 85 crore doses of the Russian vaccine annually that could fully inoculate 42.5 crore individuals if the whole production capacity was diverted solely towards India.
But, as per the GOI note, the production didn’t start until July. And even if the note further added that the country was expected to get at least 2.5 crore doses of the vaccine produced in India between August, September and October, the production process could not really take off, as revealed by the abysmally low number of Sputnik V vaccinations so far.
Read all the Latest News , Breaking News and IPL 2022 Live Updates here.
Comments
0 comment