India’s COVID vaccine supply jumps, boosting export hopes

NEW DELHI, Aug 30 (Reuters) – Increased production of COVID-19 vaccines in India and inoculation of more than half of its adult population with at least one dose raise hopes for the country to return to be an exporter in a few months, increasing since the beginning of next year.

After giving or selling 66 million doses to about 100 countries, India banned exports in mid-April to focus on domestic vaccination as infections erupted, disrupting the inoculation plans of many African and South Asian countries.

India’s daily vaccinations topped 10 million doses on Friday, and domestic vaccine production has doubled since April and will rise again in the coming weeks. New production lines have been created, a vaccine developed by Cadila Healthcare (CADI.NS) has gained recent approval and commercial production of Russia’s Sputnik V begins in India.

The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, now produces about 150 million doses a month of its version of the AstraZeneca (AZN.L) trait, more than double production of about 65 million in April, a source with knowledge of the said matter.

“There is no fixed schedule for exports, but the company expects to restart in a few months,” said the source, who refused to be appointed without approval to talk about the issue.

SII, which has previously indicated that exports could resume by the end of the year, did not respond to any requests for comment.

The global vaccine sharing platform COVAX expects India to resume overseas sales sooner rather than later.

“With the success of domestic vaccination and the arrival of more products, we expect Indian supply to COVAX to resume as soon as possible,” a spokesman for the co-leader of the GAVI platform told Reuters.

India, a major international producer of many other vaccines, could play a “similar transformational role in the global response to COVID-19,” the spokesman said.

The Ministry of Health of India and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which coordinates vaccine exports, did not respond to any requests for comment.

Bharat Biotech, the manufacturer of the first COVID-19 feature developed in India, opened a new factory on Sunday with a production capacity of 10 million doses per month. He said he was “moving toward” a goal of a total annual capacity of about 1 billion doses of the drug, Covaxin. Read more

Meanwhile, infections are on the rise again in India after an explosive outbreak in April and May. But the country has administered more than 633 million doses of vaccine, with at least one dose to 52% of its 944 million adults and two doses to more than 15%.

A government source told Reuters in June that the U.S. experience showed that vaccinations tend to decline after a large majority of people are shot. This could give SII the opportunity to export excess production, the source said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party chief said this month India could produce up to 1.1 billion doses of vaccine between September and December, enough to vaccinate all the country’s adults this year. Read more

To date, India has given emergency clearance to six COVID-19 shots, four of which are locally produced. One more domestic vaccine is expected to be approved soon, while many more are going through mid-stage trials.

Reports by Krishna N. Das; additional reports by Neha Arora; edited by Richard Pullin

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