Coronavirus vaccine shortage eases in India

India covid vaccine. (Reuters)

India has administered more Covid vaccine doses in the last two weeks than the number of people who signed up for shots during the period, government data showed yesterday, signalling improving supplies after widespread shortages. Indians struggled to book scarce inoculation slots after Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened up vaccinations to all of the country’s 930-940mn adults last month without a corresponding rise in output. Many immunisation centres ran out of vaccine shots and closed temporarily. But rising production at the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, has boosted availability of Covid shots in the country this month. The company is on course to raise monthly output of the AstraZeneca vaccine to 100mn doses or more from July, from about 90mn this month and about 65mn in May. That has helped India administer 61mn doses in the last two weeks starting June 12, compared with 58mn registrations for vaccination on the government’s Co-Win vaccination https://dashboard.cowin.gov.in website. It was the first time vaccinations exceeded registrations since the immunisation drive was expanded from May 1. India has administered 323.9mn doses, the most in the world after China and the US. Vaccination relative to people, however, is much lower in India than many countries. So far, more than 346mn people have registered for shots in India, which wants to cover all its adults this year. Currently, cities are vaccinating much faster than the countryside. India stepped up inoculations from last week when Modi’s federal government took back the responsibility of supplying doses to individual states free of cost. A previous policy of letting states buy a portion of their requirements from companies had slowed down the immunisation process. Meanwhile, Indian drugmaker Cipla has received regulatory approval to distribute partner Moderna’s Covid vaccine in the country, a senior government official said yesterday, clearing the way for the shot to be imported. Moderna’s vaccine will be the fourth shot authorised for use in India, after AstraZeneca and partner Serum Institute of India’s Covishield, Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin and Sputnik V developed by Russia’s Gamaleya Institute. “Our vaccine basket is now richer by this addition,” government official Vinod Kumar Paul said at a news briefing yesterday, adding the government remained in talks with Pfizer over the drugmaker’s vaccine. The government officials did not provide any further details on the partnership between Moderna and Cipla and how the vaccine, which is based on messenger RNA technology, will be imported. “I want to thank the government of India for this authorisation, which marks an important step forward in the global fight against the pandemic,” Moderna’s chief executive officer Stephane Bancel said. Cipla is supporting Moderna with the regulatory approval and the import of vaccines to be donated to India, the company said in an e-mail, adding that “at this stage, there is no definitive agreement on commercial supplies.” India had in May scrapped local trials for “well-established” foreign coronavirus vaccines to accelerate its vaccination rollout and the officials confirmed that the vaccine developed by Moderna will not require so-called bridging trials. Earlier in the day, Johnson & Johnson said it was in talks with the Indian government to explore ways to speed up delivery of its single-shot vaccine. Moderna’s two-dose vaccine has been widely used in several regions, including the US and Europe, but may face some cost and distribution hurdles in India as the shot requires cold storage. “Moderna is coming in ready-to-inject form as there is no manufacturing base” in India, Paul said.”But we also hope, going into the future, Moderna should produce this vaccine on Indian soil.”