NEW DELHI, Oct 20: Amidst talk of a new variant of Omicron Coronavirus may stage a comeback this winter, the chief executive of one of the world’s top vaccine manufacturer said there was no demand for the booster dose as the people in India were “fed up of the pandemic.”
The Chief Executive Officer of Serum Institute of India (SII), Adar Poonawalla, on Thursday said the vaccine manufacturer stopped the production of Covishield vaccine way back in December 2021, and of the total stock available at that time, around 100 million doses had already got expired.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the annual general meeting of Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network (DCVMN), he said booster vaccines have no demand as there was general lethargy among people and also because they are fed up with the pandemic.
“Since December 2021, we stopped the production (of Covishield). We had a stock of a few hundred million doses at that time and of that, 100 million doses have already expired,” said Poonawalla when asked about the update on the Covishield vaccine. He said the SII’s vaccines were allowed to be mixed.
“Now, Covovax should be allowed in two weeks. So I think they will and should probably have the policy to mix boosters. If WHO allowed it, then maybe the Indian regulator will and should allow it. But again, boosters have no demand at the moment. There is lethargy generally. People are fed up of COVID, vaccines. To be honest, I am also fed up with it. We all are,” he said.
Going forward, when people take a few shots every year, they may take anti-coronavirus vaccines and other shots together, Poonawalla said, adding, “It will become that kind of a product.” “In India, there is no culture of taking flu shots as we see it in the West. We tried when we launched a few vaccines in 2010. During the H1NI pandemic in 2011, no one took it. Flu is not something that sounds scary to people. They just do not want to take it,” he said.
Covishield was produced at the SII’s Pune facility with a master seed from Oxford University and AstraZeneca. The SII had announced its partnership with Oxford University to manufacture the vaccine in April 2020.
(Manas Dasgupta)