- Saturday, March 01, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India, which established itself as a major supplier of vaccine during the Covid-10 pandemic, is currently witnessing a shortage of its Covishield and Covaxin jabs as most vaccination centres in the country have reportedly run out of stocks.
According to a report by the Times of India, it is not clear as to how many centres are lacking the vaccines but it has been learnt that both government and private hubs are affected.
Sources in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Pune have told the daily that the situation was the result of batches of the vaccines surpassing their expiry date.
Does this situation pose a challenge to India’s reputation after it emerged as a major vaccine supplier to the world during the pandemic?
When India Weekly asked Dr Sanjit Singh Lamba, managing partner at Trillyum Consulting and Advisory
and chief executive officer at Biocuris Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd, about the state of India’s supply of vaccines to the world, he said the country’s capacity in the manufacturing of vaccines came to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The world became witness to India’s vaccine manufacturing prowess as India provided equitable access to resilient supply chains and logistics — further strengthening its position in the vaccine segment.
“India accounts for nearly 90 per cent of global demand for the measles vaccine . The growth has resulted in dominating the space with 65-70 per cent of the vaccine requirements of the World Health Organisation being sourced from India.
“India now supplies ~60% of the global demand for vaccines, with ~33% of vaccines supplied by Telangana’s life sciences ecosystem only. Biologicals and formulations (including vaccines) account for 77.5 per cent of India’s pharmaceuticals’ export portfolio. During the pandemic, by utilising the vibrant vaccine-manufacturing ecosystem and adhering to the core Indian philosophy of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, i.e., the world is one family, India not only provided vaccines to its 1.4 billion-strong population but also catered to the world community by supplying 242 million low-cost and high-quality vaccines to 101 countries.”
Dr Lamba said India has been a world leader in generics and biosimilars and is further expected to develop advanced technologies of the future — deep technologies, for instance, cell and gene therapy and artificial intelligence in life sciences.
He told India Weekly, “It is expected that the majority of market share for future epidemics and infectious diseases will be shared by companies investing heavily in deep tech. India’s success in the information technology sector can be leveraged to generate new partnership opportunities for the life sciences industry.
“New technologies will lead to innovation in manufacturing processes. For instance, a crucial component of cell and gene therapy is the utilisation and development of highly efficient viral vectors. Therefore, Indian pharmaceutical players should start investing in viral vector manufacturing plants. Existing 740+ US Food and Drug Administration approved plants can be optimised for novel innovations in manufacturing processes – keeping India on the right trajectory to achieve the pharmaceuticals’ market size of $130 billion by 2030.”
