Chennai: At a time when the whole country is waiting with bated breath for Covid-19 vaccine, Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, has come up with a shocker.
While a vaccine for Covid-19 could be first made publicly available anywhere from this month to the end of September depending on which vaccine you want and where you live, the odds of everyone on the planet being able to access one are low until at least 2024, he said.
Speaking to Financial Times, Adar Poonawalla said that it would take four to five years until everyone gets the vaccine on the planet.
He added that distribution in India would be difficult given the lack of a sophisticated cold chain system.
“I still don’t see a proper plan on paper to do that (in India) beyond 400 million doses…you don’t want a situation with the vaccine where you have capacity for your country but you can’t consume it,” he was quoted as saying.
Serum Institute has a production and clinical trial agreement with AstraZeneca for its vaccine, being developed by Oxford University. This vaccine trial was recently frozen after one of the participants developed transverse mylelitis, inflammation in the spinal cord.
However, on Saturday, the trial was resumed after Britain’s Medicines Health Regulatory Authority confirmed that this was safe.
Serum Institute of India (SII) had recently announced pausing clinical trials of AstraZeneca Oxford Covid-19 vaccine candidate in the country.
Earlier last week week, AstraZeneca said it had paused the trials because of ‘an unexplained illness’ in a participant in the study.
“We are reviewing the situation and pausing India trials till AstraZeneca restarts the trials,” SII said in a release.
It is following instructions of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), it added.
DGCI issued a notice to the Serum Institute of India, which was manufacturing the Oxford University’s Covishield vaccine.
Drugs Controller General of India Dr V G Somani asked SII why the permission granted for conducting phase 2 and 3 clinical trials of the vaccine candidate in the country should not be suspended till patient safety is established.
Serum Institute of India said it is following all safety protocols. In a statement, it said, “We are going by DCGI’s direction and so far were not told to pause the trials. If DCGI has any safety concerns, we will follow their instructions and abide by the standard protocols.”