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A new production line has been established, the Cadilla vaccine has been approved, and the Russian Sputnik V has begun production in India.
India’s increasing production of COVID-19 vaccines and at least one dose of vaccine vaccinated more than half of the adult population, which makes the country expected to return to becoming an exporter within a few months, and it will start to rise early next year.
After donating or selling 66 million doses of vaccines to nearly 100 countries, India banned exports in mid-April to focus on domestic immunization, as the surge in infections disrupted vaccination programs in many African and South Asian countries.
On Friday, India’s daily vaccination dose exceeded 10 million doses. The national vaccine production has more than doubled since April and will increase again in the coming weeks.
New production lines have been established, the vaccine developed by Cadila Healthcare has recently been approved, and commercial production of the Russian satellite V is starting in India.
A man receives a dose of Covishield vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India at a hospital in Noida, a suburb of New Delhi [Adnan Abidi/Reuters]According to people familiar with the matter, the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, now produces about 150 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine per month, more than double its April production of about 65 million doses.
“There is no fixed export timetable, but the company hopes to restart in a few months,” the source said, declining to be named on the matter without approval.
SII, which had previously stated that exports may resume before the end of the year, did not respond to a request for comment.
COVAX, a global vaccine sharing platform, hopes that India will resume its external sales as soon as possible.
“With the success of national vaccination and the arrival of more products, we hope India can resume the supply of COVAX as soon as possible,” a spokesperson for the platform’s co-leader GAVI told Reuters in an email.
The spokesperson said that India is a major international producer of many other vaccines and can “play a similar transformative role in the global response to COVID-19”.
India’s Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is responsible for coordinating vaccine exports, did not respond to requests for comment.
Bharat Biotech, the manufacturer of India’s first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine, opened a new plant on Sunday with a capacity of 10 million doses per month.
The company said it is “moving towards” a goal of producing approximately 1 billion doses of the drug Covaxin each year.
At the same time, following the outbreaks in April and May, India’s infection rate has risen again. But the country has received more than 633 million doses of the vaccine, of which 52% of the 944 million adults received at least one dose, and more than 15% of adults received two doses.
A government source told Reuters in June that experience in the United States has shown that after enough people are vaccinated, the rate of vaccination tends to slow. According to sources, this may give SII an opportunity to export excess output.
The head of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political party, JP Nadda, said this month that India can produce up to 1.1 billion doses of vaccine between September and December, enough to completely immunize all adults in the country this year.
To date, India has urgently approved six COVID-19 vaccines, four of which are produced locally.
Another domestic vaccine is expected to be approved soon, and more vaccines are undergoing mid-term trials.
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