China is Ready to Lend a Hand to India in Vaccines

Chinese vaccine-related producers have expressed willingness to cooperate with their Indian counterparts over vaccine production and distribution in response to India's rising concerns over supply shortages posed by the US embargo.

This came as Adar Poonawalla, CEO of India's largest vaccine producer Serum Institute of India (SII), posted a tweet on Friday, appealing to US President Joe Biden to lift an embargo on raw material exports so that other countries can ramp up vaccine production.

A manager with a pharmaceutical company based in East China's Jiangsu Province told the Global Times on condition of anonymity that the company is exporting sodium chloride for medical use to India, and some of that is used in vaccine production.

Although it is now mainly for domestic supply -- where demand for vaccine production is strong -- the manager said that capacity is adequate and the company is ready for more orders from neighboring countries, including India.

A director with a large pharmaceutical glass producer in East China's Shandong Province surnamed Zhao told the Global Times on Monday that the company has an annual output of more than 50 million bottles, which can meet the current domestic and foreign needs.

Zhao said that despite adequate production capacity, there is little willingness across the industry to export to other countries, because vaccine vials are mostly made of imported silicon glass, resulting in limited profits. But companies can expand their exports to other countries such as India if there is rising demand.

For the fourth consecutive day, India added more than 200,000 new daily infection cases, the Times of India reported on Monday, and India's total reported cases have exceeded 15 million, the most after the US, data from the John Hopkins University showed.

Although Poonawalla did not specify in his recent tweet, he did mention in March that "there are lot of bags and filters and critical items that manufacturers need," noting that the US had invoked the Defense Production Act, which prevented the export of critical raw materials required for vaccine manufacturers, the Economic Times reported on Friday.

In the face of the high numbers, India gave emergency authorization to Russia's Sputnik V vaccine this week. It has urged US vaccine producers such as Pfizer and Moderna to sell their doses to India.

Although there is no official data available to show the volume of vaccine-related exports from China to India at the moment, experts said that China's capacity is adequate and the country is ready to lend a hand to India if needed.

Even though Chinese companies are keen to help India weather the storm, some believed that their help is likely to be limited.

"Novavax vaccine needs corresponding items including the adjuvant of recombinant protein vaccine from the US, which is a bit different from the Chinese ones," Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based vaccine expert, told the Global Times on Monday. India may also need other vaccine-related products such as vials, but these are not major concerns at the moment.

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Source: Global Times

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