‘We need to allow testing for all’

NEW DELHI: Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of the Serum Institute of India and president of the Vaccine Manufacturers’ Association of India, spoke to Sunetra Choudhury about the timelines for vaccine development, the plan to begin production of some of the candidates, the low rate of testing in India, and the need to end stigma around a region where cases spike. Edited excerpts:

Everyone is tracking vaccine development closely. Is it true that you plan to begin production of the candidates as early as next month?

We have to start manufacturing some of these candidates at risk because if the world wants hundreds of millions of doses, we need to start by August-september.

We are planning to start manufacturing when we apply for Phase 3 of clinical trial permissions, which should be in the first week of August. There’s risk-taking in everything, and this is where we have chosen to put in our investment both in operating expenditure and capital expenditure -- so that we have a dedicated facility.

There’s the risk that if it doesn’t work out, we’ve got to go on to the next candidate, and so on. We’ve got five partnerships, including two of our own candidates, so I’m sure something will work.

Before we get to safety, can you explain the timeline a bit more about when vaccine will be ready for India’s billion-plus population?

Rolling out the vaccine, reaching everyone in India, is probably going to take more than a year, even from December.

So we are talking about a year-and-a-half at least. We are talking about reaching parts of the country that are difficult to reach... So up to two years provided the trials succeed and work.

A lot of people will get the disease way before the vaccine comes about, I think in the US, roughly 1% of people have got it.

That’s visible because of the amount of testing they are doing, and I’ve said if you increase the testing in India, you’ll see something similar coming about where in 3-4 years, maybe 20-30% of the population would have got the disease and have recovered.

The ICMR DG’S letter on a vaccine by August 15 created a storm. What did you make of the episode?

I think the letter was misconstrued. I think they were trying to expedite things that the government is expected to do -- and they are doing a fabulous job.

The vaccine industry is standing together to say we will conduct all Phase 1 and 2 and 3 trials, and even ICMR wants us to do that. Let us all be patient and wait for trials of drugs and vaccines to happen.

We’ve just marked the milestone of 10 million tests in India. You’re not satisfied by that?

I think that’s a joke. I think it should be 100 million. We need to allow free testing, not in terms of price, but without doctor’s certificate or such documents. Initially there were limitations to testing but that’s no longer the case.

Are there apprehensions that some states are not testing enough because of what the numbers will say about their Covid-19 management?

Initially it was true, but very soon, I don’t think anybody’s going to care. Because there is going to be no shame in a state or a country that has got these cases, because this is something out of anyone’s control; you can’t stop it.

You can mitigate it, but you can’t hold it back beyond a point. As soon as countries realise that, there is no competition, and no shame, politics doesn’t come in the way of the science. With testing, you can isolate areas, you can isolate people, you can prevent more damage by testing more.