India can play an important role in vaccine production

India could become the world’s second largest Covid vaccine manufacturer, and analysts believe the country has the potential to produce for its own population and other developing countries.

Most vaccinations in the world are originally from India. Even before Covid-19, the country in South Asia produced up to about 60% of the world’s vaccines – and at a relatively low cost.

“India was a vaccine production center … even before the pandemic, and should therefore be a strategic partner in the global vaccine against COVID-19,” JPMorgan analysts wrote in a report last month.

The consulting firm Deloitte predicts that India will be the second next to America in terms of coronavirus vaccine production this year. PS Easwaran, a partner of Deloitte India, said that more than 3.5 billion Covid vaccines could be made in the country by 2021, compared to about 4 billion in the US

Furthermore, companies in India are currently increasing production to meet the demand.

“We are expanding our annual capacity to deliver 700 million doses of our intramuscular COVAXIN,” said Indian firm Bharat Biotech, which has partnered with the state-run Indian Medical Research Council to develop a vaccine for Covid.

Covaxin has been approved for emergency use in India but has been caught up in controversy due to criticism that there is not a lack of transparency in its approval, and also because it has not published enough efficacy data.

Another vaccine – known as Covishield in India and co-developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford – has also received an emergency permit in India. It is manufactured locally by the Serum Institute of India (SII).

According to Reuters, SII makes about 50 million doses of Covishield each month, and plans to increase to 100 million doses per month by March.

Other Indian companies have agreed to produce vaccines for developers such as the Russian direct investment fund and the US firm Johnson & Johnson. To be clear, these vaccine candidates have not yet been approved for use.

“Even without successful vaccine development from their own pipelines, available capacity provides the opportunity to work as contract manufacturers with approved vaccine developers to meet supply needs, particularly for India and others. [emerging markets], ”Reads the JPMorgan report.

India’s vaccines are likely to be more suitable for developing countries, said K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India.

Some of the leading vaccines currently, such as those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, use messenger RNA technology (mRNA) that uses genetic material to cause the body’s own infection-fighting process.

These vaccines require ‘strict requirements for cold chain’ that will be difficult, or even ‘out of the question’, for most health systems, Reddy said.

Vaccines manufactured in India are easier to transport and cheaper, which puts the country in a better position than the US and Europe when it comes to demand in the developing world.

India’s high production capacity also gives analysts the confidence that the country can provide vaccinations to other countries.

New Delhi has pledged to send vaccines to its neighbors and has already delivered 15.6 million doses to 17 countries, according to Reuters.

“India’s manufacturing capacity is sufficient to meet domestic demand,” said Nissy Solomon, a senior research fellow at the Center for Public Policy Research (CPPR).

“With a proven track record on the scale at which vaccines are produced, India could increase production to meet international demand as well,” she told CNBC.

Solomon added that the country monitors domestic needs before making decisions on exports.

Bharat Biotech, for its part, said it was “fully prepared to meet the needs of India and global public health.”

However, there will be challenges as the country seeks to meet the demand for vaccine in India and beyond.

Jefferies stock analyst Abhishek Sharma wrote in a note that the explosion of vaccines in India was slow. Even assuming that the rate of vaccinations will increase, Sharma estimates that only 22% of India’s 1.38 billion people can be vaccinated within a year.

This is about the number of people India wants to vaccinate by July or August.

“The supply of vaccines is not so much a problem as the storage, distribution and uptake of vaccines,” said Solomon of CPPR.

“India does not have the capacity to store on a scale as large as this and distribute to the masses,” she said, adding that the country should ‘strategically’ opt for vaccines that do not need to be stored at extreme temperatures. does not become.

The vaccines currently manufactured by India require normal refrigeration, but those manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech must be kept in extremely cold temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit), while those of Moderna are stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius must be. (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit).

The ‘real challenge’ is the large number of people who need to be vaccinated, said Reddy of the Public Health Foundation in India.

“This is the first time an adult immunization program has been undertaken on such an unprecedented scale,” he told CNBC.

He said that vaccination programs usually focus on the vaccination of children and mothers, and that the logistics network is not prepared to handle vaccines for the entire population.

Reddy suggested that the existing refrigeration chain for food products could be used for vaccines, and was hopeful that this problem could be solved.

‘I would say that [these challenges are] more like speed bumps that slow down the … program, rather than the actual roadblocks that require the program to stop, ‘he said.