Coronavirus India: Serum Institute’s vaccine export halt a ‘nightmare’ blow to Covax plan

Name: India's brutal Covid wave brings tragic scenes to small town hospital as death toll passes 250,000
Uploaded: 2021-05-19T03:35:11.000Z
Duration: 2 min 27 s
Description: India's brutal Covid wave brings tragic scenes to small town hospital as death toll passes 250,000

The Covax Facility had originally been expecting its biggest supplier to deliver 110 million doses by May

But India in March halted exports, and as the nation’s total caseload crosses 25 million, deliveries are unlikely to resume until at least October

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Indian relatives clad in PPE mourn at a cremation ground in New Delhi. Photo: EPA-EFE

Agencies

Published: 11:35am, 19 May 2021Updated: 10:57pm, 19 May 2021

India’s Serum Institute will suspend all coronavirus vaccine exports until around the end of the year amid the country health crisis, dealing a major blow to the global initiative to share jabs with poorer nations.

The Covax Facility, a World Health Organization-backed programme, is depending on nearly 1 billion doses of the AstraZeneca shot that Serum Institute is licensed to make. The scheme had originally been expecting its biggest supplier to deliver 110 million doses by May.

But India in March halted exports and began claiming those doses for its own people as cases exploded. Deliveries are now unlikely to resume until at least October, as the country’s total Covid-19 caseload this week crossed 25 million to become the second-worst affected nation behind the United States.

“SII has delivered more than 200 million doses,” Serum Institute said on Tuesday in a statement posted to its Twitter account. “We continue to scale up and prioritise India. We also hope to start delivering to Covax and other countries by the end of the year.”

In April, as many as 60 countries had their immunisation plans stalled because postponed supplies from the Covax Facility meant most had no other source of Covid-19 vaccines.

The vaccine-sharing initiative has small supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot and deals with other producers, including Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Moderna, but most of those jabs will only be delivered late this year or next.

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India's brutal Covid wave brings tragic scenes to small town hospital as death toll passes 250,000

Adar Poonawalla, Serum Institute’s CEO, previously warned that if India’s coronavirus crisis did not subside, “I am scared of what … we will have to do, and what will happen”.

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