US reaches production capacity of Indian vaccine Covid-19 to inoculate Indo-Pacific

The US, Japan and Australia have just pledged more than $ 200 million to help Indian companies expand their capacity faster and add a billion doses to the global supply. The exploitation of vaccine production capacity in India was at the center of virtual talks on Friday between the leaders of the three countries and India, an alliance that seeks to counter Chinese expansionism known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad.

China and Russia have supplied domestically produced vaccines to much of the developing world, while the United States has so far focused much of its efforts on securing American supplies.

“We are talking about huge investments in creating additional vaccination capacity in India, for export to countries in the Indo-Pacific region for their improvement,” Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said in a briefing after the Quad Summit. Friday. “We’re talking about immunizing people in an entire region.”

The final details and scope of the Quad vaccination program are still being worked out, an Indian official said. It will begin by funding an expansion of production capacity to an Indian company, Biological E Ltd., to make one billion doses of Johnson & JohnsonS

vaccine. Authorities may subsequently consider including support for the production of a vaccine by Novavax by the Serum Institute. Inc.,

said the official.

The program will try to replicate the success of the Serum Institute in intensifying production. Serum Institute initially contracted with AstraZeneca PLC to supply vaccines only to developing countries, but has managed to develop its production capacity so quickly that it now fulfills orders in the West as well. Earlier this month, he sent five million doses to the UK, home to Oxford University, which developed the AstraZeneca vaccine.

India has been the world’s largest producer of vaccines for years. It produces more than half of the world’s vaccine volume and has built a specialization in making large batches of vaccines for emerging markets, which need every shot to cost less than a few dollars.

As the mass production and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines proved difficult, several countries and vaccine manufacturers turned to India for help.

“I think a lot of people don’t understand why they can’t get vaccines, why it’s so hard to just get supplies,” said Serum Institute CEO Adar Poonawalla. “People underestimate production on a scale; sometimes it is actually harder to scale than it is to develop or invent a vaccine. ”

Earlier this year, vaccine manufacturers were approved for use in the EU – Pfizer Inc.

and BioNTech SE,

Modern Inc.

and AstraZeneca PLC – reduction of deliveries due to manufacturing blockages. China and Russia have also encountered problems with vaccine production.

The US government’s responsibility office pointed out what is holding back several vaccines in a report last month, saying construction of new facilities, delays in delivering equipment and other supplies and a lack of experienced managers have influenced production expansion. capacity.

“Vaccine manufacturing is extremely complex and will generally grow at a gradual pace, rather than start on a full scale,” the report said.

The Serum Institute could move faster than most because it already had more capacity than any manufacturer, much of which could reuse it to produce Covid-19 vaccines. Its extensive unit in the western Indian city of Pune, about 100 miles southeast of Mumbai, is crowded with trucks, picking up pallets of vaccines and throwing away supplies needed to make, pack and deliver them – millions of bottles, corks, packages ice and coolers.

New Delhi has put an official here to keep track of where the vaccines are going. The company added hundreds of employees to increase production, including 50 commandos to guard the facility.

Prior to the pandemic, the Serum Institute was already delivering about 1.5 billion doses of vaccines a year. It has been the main supplier for international organizations such as Unicef ​​and emerging markets, as it sells most vaccines at a dose of less than $ 1. It does this and still makes a profit, making lots of millions of doses at a time. Over the decades he has done so, he has built special skills, equipment and analysis that few can match.

As soon as its first bottle of cellular material used to create the AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in May, scientists at the Serum Institute began to grow enough of it to fill large containers – some capable of holding 2,000 liters, or nearly 530 gallons.

Over time, scientists have discovered how to make doses faster, playing with the process to get more out of each batch. The secret, say Serum scientists, is to know how to grow large amounts of cells into larger bioreactors, large metal vats used to grow cells to make vaccines. He also knows the right time to introduce the virus into the cells, as well as when that virus, which becomes the basis of the vaccines, needs to be harvested.

It took months to understand the best way to mass-produce the AstraZeneca vaccine, said Umesh Shaligram, executive director of Serum. “You have to understand – in a sense – how your cells behave, how a virus behaves. It takes a little time to understand, “he said. “Every team you lead you understand better.”

By December, he was taking 30 million doses a month. This month it is making more than 70 million doses and is expected to reach 100 million in the next month or two.

“What we do now every month is what most companies do every year,” said Mr. Poonawalla. “We have worked hard to reallocate all these facilities and get equipment in record time to do so.”

Serum Institute is now trying to repeat the rapid launch, this time building the capacity to produce one billion doses of a Covid-19 vaccine from Novavax, which has recently been shown to be 89.3% effective in protecting people from disease. In a separate installation in a new building, six 4,000-liter steel tanks imported earlier this year were installed and tested.

The success brought a new kind of headache, as Serum had to try to navigate the backlash against his ads. As it began exporting tens of millions of doses worldwide, some wondered why the doses were not kept for Indians. When deliveries were announced in the first countries, others asked why they did not receive doses.

“I humbly ask you to be patient, @SerumInstIndia has been directed to prioritize India’s huge needs and, along with this balance, the needs of the rest of the world,” Mr Poonawalla said. posted to Twitter last month. “We’re trying our best.”

Write to Eric Bellman at [email protected]

—Rajesh Roy contributed to this article.