Two of India’s leading vaccine manufacturers making shots at AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have warned that world vaccine production is threatened by America’s pandemic export controls.
Mahima Datla, CEO of the pharmaceutical company Biological E, said U.S. suppliers claim they may not be able to place orders with global customers because Washington uses the Defense Production Act.
Datla urgently called for international intervention and told the Financial Times: “This will not only make it difficult to scale up Covid vaccines, but it will also make it difficult to produce routine vaccines.”
Both US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump called on the Korean War era DPA during the pandemic to secure priority supplies of materials needed to control the disease. But because the U.S. has ordered more than enough doses for every adult in the U.S., U.S. suppliers are struggling to make enough to fulfill contracts outside the country.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a spokesman said last week: “The president is deeply focused on the issue of expanding global vaccination, manufacturing and delivery, which will all be critical. be to end the pandemic. ‘
Mahima Datla, CEO of Biological E, called for urgent international intervention to tackle vaccine supply © Noah Seelam / AFP via Getty Images
Drug manufacturers around the world are struggling to increase production as countries trade allegations of “vaccine nationalism”. Last week, European Council President Charles Michel said the UK had introduced a ban on the export of vaccines, a demand that had been denounced by Boris Johnson’s government. The EU has urged the US to allow free flow of drug supplies to address the vaccine shortage.
The White House said in response that it was “in close contact with the EU regarding our shared concerns about vaccines”.
On Friday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, also warned about global shortages of vital components, which limit the production of Covid-19 shots, but also stab wounds used for routine vaccinations in children. He said some countries had introduced legal restrictions, which ‘endangered lives’ and called on countries not to stockpile. “We are all interdependent,” he said. “No country can simply vaccinate its way out of this.”
Datla, whose company manufactures the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, said the DPA means suppliers are “reluctant to commit to their delivery timelines”.
“The challenges in the supply chain are going to make scaling up very difficult.”
The materials that are an important part of vaccine production include plastics, such as disposable fermenters and bags manufactured by a limited number of companies. Some vaccine makers have stopped production for days due to a lack of large sterile liners. Stocks of laboratory reagents, used for chemical tests, were also a source of concern, she added.
Biological E, a Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company, supplies vaccines to WHO and Unicef for worldwide distribution.
It is developing a Covid-19 vaccine in partnership with the American pharmaceutical company Dynavax Technologies Corporation and the Baylor College of Medicine with the aim of producing doses of 1 billion. The company also manufactures at least 1 billion doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine by 2022.
Datla’s remarks come after Adar Poonawalla, chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker, warned that the law on defense production could undermine the global vaccination effort.
“The Novavax vaccine, for which we are a major manufacturer, requires these articles from the US,” Poonawalla said. “We’re talking about free worldwide access to vaccines, but if we can’t get the raw materials out of the US, that would be a serious constraint.”
Datla said she was hopeful that the supply situation could be resolved after a Friday meeting between the Quad – a diplomatic and security initiative between the US, Japan, India and Australia.
The US is working with the Quad to counter China’s growing presence in the region and hopes to combat Beijing’s growing influence with vaccine diplomacy.
Additional reporting by Hannah Kuchler in New York and Kiran Stacey in Washington