Eight months after the Serum Institute of India stopped shipments to COVAX — the international initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines — deliveries resumed on Friday.
"I am pleased to announce, that the much awaited COVAX supplies will resume today from @SerumInstIndia. This will go a long way in restoring vaccine supply equality in the world and especially in [low and middle income countries]," SII Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla tweeted on Friday.
Vaccine famine: SII was supplying COVAX with AstraZeneca vaccine until shipments stopped in March, only weeks after the first international shipments of vaccines from COVAX began arriving in countries. This was due to a domestic COVID-19 crisis in India which spiraled out of control, causing the government to halt exports.
COVAX was overly dependent on SII for its vaccine supply — so it wasn’t able to fulfill the promised doses to countries following the severing of this supply. Many countries were left scrambling to find vaccines from elsewhere but were unable to because high-income countries had hoarded supplies. Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, described the following months as a “vaccine famine.”
“While COVAX’s portfolio is now much more diversified than it was earlier this year when we received our first SII deliveries, COVISHIELD remains an important product which has the potential to help us protect hundreds of millions of people in the months ahead,” said Dr. Seth Berkley, chief executive officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in a press release.
Resumed exports: SII said the government’s decision to resume exports is linked to the institute surpassing its year-end target of producing 1 billion doses. To scale up production further, the manufacturer plans to also produce the COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax, which has emergency-use authorization in Indonesia and the Philippines.
About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.