Serum Institute of india CEO Adar Poonawalla on saturday spoke out about the pressures he was under over the production of COVID-19 vaccines to meet the ever-increasing demand in india as the country battles through a devastating second wave of the corona virus pandemic. India’s “vaccine prince” Adar Poonawalla rose to fame in 2020 when he became the only indian billionaire to put his weight behind an international Covid-19 vaccine. Poonawalla, last year struck a deal with AstraZeneca to manufacture and stockpile its Covid-19 vaccine. These doses could be sold in india and to other countries under contracts with AstraZeneca. SII was also responsible for the India-specific bridging study for the shots to test its efficacy in the local population.

in october 2020, he said that SII had produced about 5 crore doses for the purposes of stockpiling. He was confident at the time that his company could scale up to produce a total of 10 crore doses by January. A month later, when prime minister narendra modi visited SII’s headquarters in pune, Poonawalla said his Covid-19 vaccine facility would ramp up to 10 crore doses a month, likely by March. Now, it is May, and SII’s production capacity has remained at around 7 crore doses a month. Poonawalla, meanwhile, has flip-flopped on the reasons for a delay in ramping up.

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