BBC channel told how the Indian firm had become the leader in manufacture of vaccines
As pharmaceutical giants increase manufacture in race for the whole world vaccination, one firm has rushed forward. It is Serum Institute of India (SII) - the world's largest manufacturer of vaccines.
The firm makes 1, 5 billion doses every year at huge manufacturing enterprise in Poona, the Western India. Now it makes vaccines for Covid under the licence for such pharmaceutical firms, as AstraZeneca.
- He most important part that enabled us to have so many doses - 70-80 million in January - was because I started manufacturing at risk in August," Serum Institute of India's chief executive Adar Poonawalla told the BBC in the interview.
it wasn't a blind risk, because we knew the Oxford scientists from our earlier collaboration with the malaria vaccine that we're making with them, - he added.
SII is in a private property that has allowed Mr. Poonawalla and his scientists quickly to make decisions. But financing appeared a problem. The firm invested about 260 million dollars, and the rest was received from philanthropists, such as Bill Gates, and in the form of advance payments from other countries.
SII managed to secure $800m by May 2020 to make multiple Covid vaccines.
How did SII actually scale up production? In April 2020, Mr Poonawalla calculated what they would need, from vials and filters.
- I got 600 million doses worth of glass vials ahead of time and locked it in my warehouse by September," he explained. - The most important part that enabled us to have so many doses - 70-80 million in January - was because I started manufacturing at risk in August.
- I wish other companies also had taken that risk, because the world would have had many more doses.
Poonawalla scarified a scrappy blanket of global systems of regulation and absence of the coordination because of manufacture delays.
He said the major regulators, including the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), could have united and agreed a quality standard.
He also stated that claiming that regulators in the countries that are making the vaccines, from India to Europe, could have united to agree a standard international benchmark.
- A lot of vaccine hesitancy traditionally has come about when either celebrities or non-experts have said vaccines are not safe," said Mr Poonawalla. – “I always just request celebrities and others who have this tremendous power on the social networks, to just be a bit responsible and read up on the facts before they say anything.”
