The world’s largest vaccine producer suspends its production of AstraZeneca version against Covid

The world’s largest vaccine producer, the Serum Institute of India, has halted production of its local version of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine due to falling demand, its CEO said on Friday.

The Serum Institute has produced more than 1 billion doses of Covishield — its version of the AstraZeneca vaccine — and is the largest provider of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covax Facility for the world’s poorest countries.

This situation contrasts with what happened about a year ago, when India – known as the “pharmacy of the world” – had to restrict its exports to fight a terrible wave of infection in its territory, leading to an extreme situation for the health of this nation of 1.4 billion people. Vaccine exports resumed last November.

“We have 200 million doses in reserve,” said the institute’s CEO, Adar Poonawalla.

“We stopped production in December. I even suggested that they be donated to whoever wants to take them,” he told an economic forum organized by the Times Network group.

“I don’t know what to do with the product. That’s why I had to tell them to stop producing. If not, [as doses] will expire,” he added.

Despite the interruption in production, the Serum Institute was an important pole of production of vaccines against Covid, not only for Covishield, but also for other vaccines. At the beginning of Covid-19 vaccination in Brazil, the first shipments of AstraZeneca vaccine sent to the country came from the Indian institute.

Neighboring countries of the Indian giant also benefited from local production, such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Vaccines helped stop the number of deaths in 2021, saving thousands of lives. But with the delay in vaccination in several countries, the last year was also marked by the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus, such as the delta, whose origin was in India, in April 2021, and the omicron, which appeared for the first time in Africa. of the South in November 2021.

The supply to the Covax Facility, however, fell short of what was expected by the WHO itself, which failed to reach the target of 70% of the world’s population vaccinated by 2021. In several countries, including many on the American continent and some Caribbean countries, such as Haiti , less than 10% of the population has already received at least two doses of the vaccine in what became known as the primary vaccination schedule.

India is even in a dispute with the WHO over the true number of deaths from Covid in the country. While official figures say that 520,000 victims have died from the coronavirus in the country, a WHO investigation pointed out that the true number would be about eight times that amount, reaching 4 million dead.

According to the WHO report, the world would have reached the mark of 15 million deaths still in 2021. Also according to the survey, more than a third of the 9 million additional deaths would have occurred in the Indian country. India harshly criticized the report and said the mathematical model used was questionable.