As a leading global vaccine manufacturer, India is poised to play a strategic role as a supply hub for vaccines.

But it has to contend with the huge challenge of supply chain and logistics, according to experts.

India contributes to about 60-70 per cent of global supplies of vaccines and is again set to become a hub in the Covid-19 vaccine manufacture for Indian vaccine candidates and global pharma companies.

“India has been playing a key role in global vaccine supplies. It is all set to make big strides in development of Covid vaccine with at least few candidates in advanced stage of clinical trails and approvals,” said Krishna Ella, Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Biotech, at an event hosted by the Belgium Embassy and the CII on Tuesday.

“By the middle of next year, we will have a number of Covid vaccines for use globally,” Ella added.

Transporting challenges

“If you take a population of 1.3 billion needing two doses, it means we need 2.6 billion syringes. So as a company, apart from Covax which is undergoing advanced phase III trails and getting set for approvals, we are working on a nasal vaccine which needs a single dose of few drops. It will get into trial mode and get approvals for use possibly by May-June 2021,” he said.

GV Prasad, CMD, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, said Indian innovation has played a key role in bringing out vaccines in such a short timeframe.

“Thus far, we have had the ability to supply vaccines with temperatures of about 4° C and as low as -20°C. Some vaccines can be stored at about 2-8°C,but some require really cold temperatures of about -80°C. This is a real big challenge when we are transporting themto say Africa or South America,” Ella said.

The pharma manufacturing hubs of Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Mumbai will be at the heart of this challenging supply chain, Ella said. “The biggest exercise thus far handled was administering vaccines to 125 million children, each with five doses. But now we are talking about covering seven billion people,” he explained.

About 15 per cent of vaccines are wasted every year due to broken supply chains. And the Covid vaccine throws up another challenge, experts felt. Mark Van de Vreken, Consul General of Belgium at Chennai, highlighted how Belgium could become a transit hub for supply of vaccines.

Pankaj Bhatnagar, Acting Team Lead National Public Health, WHO Office for India, said: “We are at the cusp of securing approvals for Indian vaccines. “India is planning 300 million doses in phase one and the real challenge will be prioritisation of whom to administer,” he said.

Progress report

Following arrangements made by the Centre, more than 60 heads of foreign missions are likely to converge at Hyderabad on Wednesday and visit vaccine makers Bharat Biotech and Biological E. They would be briefed about the progress made by these companies in the Covid-19 vaccine development, according to sources.

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