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The Serum Institute of India was basically contracted by Astra Zeneca to make doses for Covax. The Indian government had never placed a substantial order or pre
by pkaye 6y ago
The Serum Institute of India was basically contracted by Astra Zeneca to make doses for Covax. The Indian government had never placed a substantial order or prepaid for an order to the SII in order to ramp up production until the numbers started spiking. The SII at one point was running out of storage space so they resorted to selling to western countries at higher margin to free up some space and get more capital.
Here is an article about Indian orders for vaccines early this year: https://i.redd.it/r4ybk9b3w3u61.jpg https://i.redd.it/r4ybk9b3w3u61.jpg
Regarding the raw materials export ban I agree we should share but I wonder if it is just supply constrained. I've read even in the US they have washed and reused single use filter bags to extend life. I've read that despite the US not exporting AZ vaccines, AZ was exporting vaccine liquid to Europe to overcome their shortfall in production.
https://www.politico.eu/article/astrazeneca-vaccine-shortfall-production-woes-documents/ https://www.politico.eu/article/astrazeneca-vaccine-shortfal...
- hangonhn 6y agoThanks for this info. That was part that always confused me about India and SII. I couldn't believe that they were exporting vaccines a while back. It just didn't make sense to me given the size of India's population. The only explanation I could think of was that they were being overly altruistic. My more cynical friends said maybe SII was being overly capitalistic. But your explanations makes more sense.
- pkaye 6y agoI would say SII is pretty capitalistic. Its charging $8/dose in India vs $3-4/dose that AZ is charging in US and EU. And that is before any markups in public hospitals from what I hear. And remember SII got $250M from Bill Gates and didn't have to do vaccine development like Oxford/AZ. The Covaxin vaccine developed in India is even more expensive but they had to do their own development. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/serum-institute-covishield-price-india-world-7286635/lite/ https://indianexpress.com/article/india/serum-institute-covi...
- KorematsuFred 6y agoSorry that is misinformation. The article you have quoted is also completely incoherent. What is the point of comparing dates of when India placed first order with when UK targets complete vaccination ? - The Indian government had never placed a substantial order or prepaid for an order to the SII in order to ramp up production until the numbers started spiking. India had placed order for 14M vaccines in January. an by March 16 had placed order for around 120M vaccines. Cases spiked after that. - The SII at one point was running out of storage space so they resorted to selling to western countries at higher margin to free up some space and get more capital. The space has nothing to do with the exports. SII is obligated to export vaccines as per their licensing terms with AZ. (Indian government might engage in coercion and prevent them from honoring it, but that is a different tale). > https://i.redd.it/r4ybk9b3w3u61.jpg https://i.redd.it/r4ybk9b3w3u61.jpg This article is some kind of shoddy job of stiching unrelated facts to create a story. Indian government made a major goof up. They put unreasonable price controls on the vaccine manufacturer and harassed a lot of people involved in the process. With low price controls there was no way for SII to raise capital, not to mention their gamble of stockpiling vaccines did not pay off because of that. Indian government passed down the responsibility of subsidizing the vaccine to SII instead of taking it on itself. Some government folks even openly wondered why GoI should even bother paying SII. This is the old socialist mentality.