The world’s biggest and leading vaccine producer has warned everyone that producing COVID-19 vaccines enough for the global population will take at least four years until 2024.
CEO of Serum Institute of India, Adar Poonawalla, in an interview with the Financial Times on Monday said that the pharmaceutical companies are not increasing the production capacity fast enough so as to vaccine everyone before 2024.
“It is going to take four or five years until everyone gets the vaccine on this planet”, Poonawalla said.
If the COVID-19 Vaccine requires two jabs like measles, the world will need 15 billion doses of the vaccine. He said, “I know the world needs to be optimistic about it, but I haven’t heard anyone coming even close to that level right now.”
The World’s Largest COVID-19 Vaccine Producer
Adar Poonawalla is in talks with the investors for raising $600 million to increase the production capacity of the company and meet its largest production, about 1 billion doses.
“We are doing a raise and diluting equity so that we have enough capital to manage the raw materials and equipment we need in the next one or two years to operate at this scale”, he said
The Serum Institute of India is working with five other global pharmaceutical firms. These include AstraZeneca and Novavax to develop a COVID-19 Vaccine. The Institute may also partner with Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute to produce the “Sputnik” vaccine.
The Serum Institute of India manufactures nearly 1.5 billion doses of COVID-19 Vaccine per year which is distributed in more than 170 countries, most of which come under the developing nation’s banner. The vaccines are used to protect against the diseases like influenza and polio.
Adar Poonawalla has given this statement as the various drug companies across the world have scrambled for an effective vaccine to treat the COVID-19, a disease that has killed almost 950,000 people worldwide.
