‘Takes four months to get vaccine out for use’
NEW DELHI: The mystery over Bharat Biotech’s capacity was resolved on Friday with the company releasing a statement that there was a four-month lag between manufacturing and use, which meant that doses made in March would get used only in June, and those manufactured in April, in July.
Bharat Biotech has supplied 20 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin, to the Union government for roll-out in the national immunisation programme, the company added.
“Production scale-up of vaccines is a step-by-step process, involving several regulatory standard operating procedures of good manufacturing practices. There is a four-month lag time for Covaxin to translate into actual vaccination,” the company said on Friday after an article in The Times of India pointed out that there seemed to be a huge gap between the company’s reported monthly capacity and the doses supplied.
For instance, in March, according to information in the public domain, the company produced 15 million doses; and in April, 20 million. Yet, only 20 million doses in all have been supplied to the government, and many states say there is a shortage of Covaxin.
The company did not divulge the number of doses supplied to the Centre in May, saying that it can’t share month on month data.
“The manufacturing, testing, release and distribution of vaccines is a complex and multi-factorial process with hundreds of steps, requiring a diverse pool of human resources. For vaccines to result in actual vaccination of people, highly coordinated efforts are required from international supply chain, manufacturers, regulators and State and Central government agencies,” it said.
Based on Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation guidelines, all vaccines have to be submitted for testing and release to the Central Drugs Laboratory. Once cleared, they are despatched to the depots of the state governments and the Centre. That process takes only two days, the company’s statement said.
According to the Centre’s Co-WIN platform, of the total of nearly 204 million Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in the country since January 16, about 20 million (2,21,07,737) are Covaxin.
“The chaos is a result of the government having under estimated the vaccine demand, and overestimated the production capacity of its manufacturers,” said Dr Chandrakant Lahariya, senior public health and vaccine expert.