By the third quarter of this year, the supply of vaccines for Covid-19 may meet or even outstrip the demand in India, given the number of vaccines being developed in the country and its capacity, said AstraZeneca Pharma India Country President and MD Gagan Singh on Friday.
The pandemic has shown the importance of biopharmaceutical industry in the healthcare ecosystem.
“I am very hopeful given our enterprise, given the number of vaccines India is developing and the capacity available, hopefully in my own personal read, by quarter 3, we may actually have a situation where supply will meet up the demand or even outstrip,” Singh added.
We must compliment our government also in its efforts towards getting the country in putting the plan for vaccination together and now in the rollout, he added.
“Vaccines have to be made available broadly, impartially and timely”, Singh said. “This is the reason why AstraZeneca globally went around having supply agreements in place towards 3 billion doses covering 160 countries and more importantly at no profit during the pandemic.
AstraZeneca’s partnership in India with Serum Institute is a sub-licensing agreement of its molecule and they (Serum Institute) bring in close to 1 billion doses which are extremely important not only for India but also for low and middle income countries, he added.
While mentioning about the safety and efficacy of the company’s vaccine, Singh said that in the month of December Lancet enabled us to share a full disclosure of the Oxford programme interim analysis.
He said, “the results clearly showed that the vaccine is effective against Covid-19. No severe infection and no hospitalizations in the vaccine group was reported”.
He said this while speaking in a session on healthcare at a virtual event organised by TiE Delhi-NCR.