Serum Institute to prioritise India’s demand for Covid jabs

Indian citizens will be given priority to the covid vaccine despite the global demand for it, the Serum Institute of India (SII) has announced.

The company has frozen the export of vaccines to other countries till the end of 2021.

Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of SII said, “We continue to scale up manufacturing and prioritise India. We also hope to start delivering Covax to other countries by the end of this year.”

The Serum Institute’s CEO had previously said he hoped to resume exports in June, but only if the number of Covid-19 cases in India began to decline.

The group’s latest announcement is a major blow to Covax, a WHO-backed global vaccine programme that aims to provide 2bn doses to the developing world in 2021. The crisis in India has already derailed vaccination programmes in countries depending on Covax to deliver Serum-made doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

Poonawalla said on Tuesday, “We would like to reiterate that we have never exported vaccines at the cost of the people in India and remain committed to do everything we can in support of the vaccination drive in the country.”

The Serum Institute of India has been producing hundreds of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, with many countries around the world, particularly poorer nations, relying heavily on the company for supplies.

But the Indian government put the brakes on vaccine exports as the nation of 1.3 billion people experienced a new wave of cases that has pushed the healthcare system to breaking point.

“In the past few days, there has been intense discussion on the decision of our government and Indian vaccine manufacturers including SII to export vaccines,” Serum’s chief executive, Adar Poonawalla, said in a statement.

India had exported nearly 66.4 million doses as donations, under commercial arrangements or via Covax to more than 90 countries before exports were slowed more than a month ago.