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News came last week that Astra Zeneca is cutting its deliveries to the EU by more than 75 million doses. For Sweden, this means 3.3 million doses less than estimated. The reason is that the UK, US and India have stopped exports to ensure that domestic markets get the vaccines first. In the US, the Astra Zeneca vaccine has not yet been approved, but tens of millions of doses are still stored in refrigerators rather than shipped to Europe.
Sweden’s vaccine coordinator, Rickard Bergström, cautioned that the vaccine protectionism countries are committed to may also mean that it will be difficult to source components and spare parts that production depends on.
– What is happening now is very worrying, said Richard Bergström.
From India, which has halted vaccine exports to the EU and Sweden, there are now signs that the US is refusing to export filters, disposable hoses, chemicals, raw materials and special packaging that are necessary in the manufacture of Astra’s vaccine Zeneca. The Serum Institute in the multi-million dollar city of Pune, the world’s largest vaccine factory producing between 60 and 70 million doses of corona vaccine a month, has been forced to stop two large orders to the UK and Nepal due to the material shortage.
“The distribution of these important raw materials will be a critical limiting factor, and no one has been able to deal with that until now,” Adar Poonawalla, owner of the Serum Institute, told the BBC.
The vaccine manufacturer has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government calling for steps to be taken to “ensure uninterrupted production to meet global deliveries of the vaccine.”
Another Indian manufacturer, Biological E, which makes Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine, has also raised concerns about possible material deficiencies affecting vaccine production. Mahima Datla, the company’s chief executive, recently said that US suppliers “were not willing to commit to meeting agreed delivery times,” the BBC reports.
In the United States, President Joe Biden has noted that he puts “America first” when it comes to access to drugs and materials needed for manufacturing. He has chosen not to revoke a single one of Donald Trump’s decrees on dose hoarding.
Serum institute It is a key player in both deliveries to India with 1.3 billion inhabitants, neighboring countries that in some cases receive vaccines to strengthen India’s position in the region and to countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and South Africa. In the long term, the Serum Institute will also deliver more than 1 billion doses to the UN-led Covax program, ensuring that economically weak countries are not unlucky with the sixteen doses of vaccines.
By the turn of the year, Adar Poonawalla expects the Serum Institute to produce 1.5 billion doses of the coronavine vaccine. In India, the Astra Zeneca vaccine is manufactured under the name Covishield.
