As India fights the new surge of COVID cases with over 3 lakh per day, SII chief Adar Poonawalla said our shortage of vaccine doses will last months. As per a report in Financial Times, he said that the vaccine shortage in India will continue through July.?
After that, he said that the production will increase from 60-70 million doses a month to about 100 million. This statement comes just days after India opened vaccinations for all adults from May 1.
"Everybody really felt that India had started to turn the tide on the pandemic," he said as per the report.?
"There were no orders, we did not think we needed to make more than 1 billion doses a year," he added.?
Meanwhile, Poonawalla has also left India to be with his family in UK. While talking to The Times, he revealed that he was receiving aggressive calls from some of the most powerful people in India, demanding supplies of Covishield.?
"Threats in an understatement," he said.?
"The level of expectation and aggression is really unprecedented. It's overwhelming. Everyone feels they should get the vaccine. They can't understand why anyone else should get it before them," he added.?
"I'm staying here for an extended time because I don't want to go back to that situation. Everything falls on my shoulders but I can't do it alone...I don't want to be in a situation where you are just trying to do your job, and just because you can't supply the needs of X, Y or Z you really don't want to guess what they are going to do," he went on to say.??