The Indian Pharmaceutical Giant ‘SII’ to cut Covishield production by 50 percent
_Vinayak Barot
New Delhi: Amid the rising ‘Omicron’ threat in the world, the Indian pharmaceutical giant Serum Institute of India (SII) has decided to cut the covishield vaccine production by 50 percent. Chief Executive officer of SII Adar Poonawalla said that “The Company has decided to cut the production by 50 percent as Company has no orders from the Centre.”
Adar Poonawalla also clarified that he wants to keep the excess capacity in case the nation needs a huge amount of stock.
“Hope it never happens, but I don’t want to be in a situation where we can’t provide vaccines over the next 6 months. We would stockpile 20-30 million doses of Sputnik light vaccine and won’t “take too many risks”. “As soon as we get a license, we can produce at a very high rate,” Poonawalla added.
On the new variant of Covid-19 ‘Omicron’, Adar Poonawalla said that “There is no reason to believe that existing jabs will not work against new variant,”
“There is no reason to believe that we won’t have a decent level of protection with double vaccination. Indian experts have deemed the level of protection as very good,” he said, adding that AstraZeneca had 80% efficacy against the virus as per Lancet.
Poonawalla further said that he has reviewed orders of 400-500 million doses through Covax and has been in touch with various African leaders. Covax was launched last April by Gavi, the World Health Organisation, European Commission, and France with the objective to distribute Covid-19 vaccines to lower-and middle-income countries. Gavi is a global private-public health partnership, which aims to ensure access to vaccines in the poorest countries.
