Africa CDC director calls Serum Institute of India head 'condescending'

Comments made by Adar Poonawalla, CEO at the Serum Institute of India, are “condescending” toward African nations, said Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, during a news briefing Thursday.

SII announced this week it is reducing its output of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine because supply has outstripped demand. In an article from the United Kingdom’s The Times published Sunday, Poonawalla accused African nations of not placing enough orders.

“It’s a combination of vaccine hesitancy and nations not coming forward and placing orders in the way in which they claim they would, particularly the African nations. I’m happy to say that on record and I hope they read it because maybe they’ll get activated and do something about it,” he said.

He added: “Everywhere I hear the World Health Organisation and others talking about vaccine inequality, but the African nations are refusing to place orders. We’ve barely got 20 million doses worth of orders from the African nations. They’re going very slow, claiming that they’re waiting for donations from the US and other reasons. So there’s a bit of a disconnect.”

SII has provided its vaccine to COVAX — the international platform providing low- and middle-income countries with free doses of COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX had been overly dependent on SII as its primary source of doses earlier in the year, so when the Indian government banned the export of COVID-19 vaccines in March, it severed the flow of doses into many African nations.

This left them in a rough spot for months where they unsuccessfully worked to secure doses but were unable, leaving the majority of the population across the continent severely unprotected as the virus ripped through countries, claiming scores of lives.

SII only began to restart its exports at the end of last month, after eight months. But by this time, COVAX had diversified its portfolio, and countries have received a variety of different types of COVID-19 vaccines, from different manufacturers.  

The comments by Poonawalla were “very, very regrettable and unfortunate,” Nkengasong said.

“It was so condescending that I can’t believe that the CEO of such an organization stated that these African countries are not coming to pick their vaccines and blaming, literally, African countries,” he said.

The statements from Poonawalla are not accurate, said Dr. Richard Mihigo, immunization and vaccine development program manager, at WHO’s regional office for Africa, at a separate news conference, because there are no African countries placing individual orders with SII, but rather COVAX made the orders and is facilitating deliveries to countries.

The African Union had separate interactions with SII outside of COVAX. The AU set up the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust as a special purpose vehicle for the pooled procurement of vaccines for countries to purchase — knowing the doses coming from COVAX would fall short of what the continent needs to meet its vaccination targets. It engaged with SII last year, long before the export ban, Nkengasong said, and the two entities were close to signing an agreement. But then, there was silence.

“Serum decided to act in a very unprofessional manner and stopped communicating with AVAT’s team,” Nkengasong said.

“They were so unprofessional that we just stopped the discussions with them,” he added.

Strive Masiyiwa, head of AVAT also said in July that the AU didn't do business with SII because "it was clear it would be unable to meet its orders."

AVAT then pivoted to engage with Johnson & Johnson, and signed an agreement for 400 million doses for African nations to purchase. It has also signed an agreement for up to 110 million Moderna doses.

“Now Serum is shipping vaccines to COVAX … it would not surprise me that countries are now looking at that like: ‘Okay, we needed you, and you were not there for us,’” Nkengasong said.

“To now turn around and say that these African countries are not coming to get vaccines is very unfortunate,” he added.

At the time of publication, SII had not responded to our request for comments.