Working with AstraZeneca, SII and India to restart vaccine shipments: WHO official
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The World Health Organization (WHO) is “urgently” making an attempt to work with AstraZeneca, the Serum Institute of India (SII) in addition to the Indian authorities to restart shipments of COVID-19 vaccines to international locations that had to droop the roll-out of the second dose amid a disruption in provides, a senior official on the UN well being company mentioned.
“We have a huge number of countries that had to suspend the roll-out of their second doses of vaccines,” Bruce Aylward, Senior Adviser to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, mentioned on Friday at a press briefing.
“Over 30 or 40 countries could have been targeted for the second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines… [but they] will not be able to do that,” Mr. Aylward mentioned.
“We are now urgently trying to work with AstraZeneca, as well as SII and the India government, to restart these shipments so that we can get those second doses into the populations… We are running into a longer interval than we would have liked,” he mentioned.
Mr. Aylward added that a number of international locations, notably these in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, West Asia and South Asia, have been hit laborious by the disruption.
“Some countries were particularly hit hard, including those that surround India like Nepal, Sri Lanka and others who suffered a severe wave of the disease. We are desperately trying to access doses. We’ve had quite a substantial problem related to this,” he mentioned.
Earlier this month, Mr. Aylward had mentioned about 80 million (eight crore) doses had been distributed via COVAX, a worldwide initiative geared toward equitable entry to COVID-19 vaccines. But the alliance was about 200 million (20 crore) doses behind the place it ought to have been due to the disruption in provides because of the devastating second wave of COVID-19 in India.
“The problem now is that the supplies are being interrupted. We are having disruptions because of the problems in India and others, and are having trouble filling that gap. As a result, countries are having trouble getting the momentum and starting well,” Mr. Aylward mentioned.
He added that provides out of India have been interrupted due to the necessity to redirect them there amid the surging second wave.
He famous that the donation of vaccines was a “short-term” answer within the face of a really imperfect market and these international locations that had monetary assets and have been producing the merchandise had entry to vaccines. “That is what we are trying to change, particularly in this period from June through September,” he mentioned.
Mr. Aylward additionally mentioned WHO had anticipated SII volumes to open up once more within the fourth quarter. “We’re setting up for failure if we don’t get early doses,” he had mentioned.
SII, the world’s largest vaccine producer, is the important thing provider of AstraZeneca doses to COVAX. However, the availability of vaccines from SII to COVAX had been impacted due to the second wave in India.
Last month, Mr. Ghebreyesus had mentioned as soon as the devastating outbreak in India receded, “We also need SII to get back on track and catch up on its delivery commitments to COVAX”.
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