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- There won’t be enough doses of a Covid-19 vaccine to reach everyone around the world until at least 2024, according to the CEO of the world’s largest vaccine producer.
- Drug companies are not increasing production fast enough to vaccinate everyone before 2024, Adar Poonawalla, executive director of the Serum Institute of India, told the Financial Times.
- Poonawalla said that if the coronavirus vaccine requires two doses, the world will need 15 billion doses. “I haven’t heard of anyone who comes close to that at this point,” he said.
- Visit the Business Insider SA home page for more stories.
The head of the world’s largest vaccine producer has warned that it will take at least four years to produce enough vaccines for the entire world’s population.
Adar Poonawalla, executive director of the Serum Institute of India, told the Financial Times on Monday that pharmaceutical companies are not increasing production capacity fast enough to vaccinate everyone before 2024.
“It will take four to five years for everyone on this planet to get the vaccine,” Poonawalla said.
The world will need 15 billion doses if the Covid-19 vaccine requires two injections, as measles does, he said. “I know the world wants to be optimistic about it [but] I haven’t heard of anyone who comes close to that [level] right now, “he said.
Poonawalla is in talks with investors about raising $ 600 million to increase the company’s production capacity and meet its goal of producing 1 billion doses, he said. “We are doing a … capital increase and dilution so that we have enough capital to manage the raw materials and equipment that we need in the next one or two years to operate at this scale,” he said.
The Serum Institute of India is working with five other global pharmaceutical firms, including AstraZeneca and Novavax, to develop a coronavirus vaccine, and may partner with Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute to produce the “Sputnik” vaccine.
The pharmaceutical company manufactures 1.5 billion doses of vaccines a year for more than 170 countries, most of which are developing countries, to protect against infectious diseases such as influenza and polio.
Poonawalla’s declaration comes as pharmaceutical companies around the world fight for an effective vaccine that will fight Covid-19, which has killed nearly 950,000 people around the world.
Last week, AstraZeneca said that its coronavirus vaccine, one of the world’s leading candidates, could still be available later this year or early next, even after the company was forced to pause critical trials the last week after an unexpected illness participant.
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