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For the first time since April, India resumed exports of COVID-19 shots to the worldwide vaccine-sharing network COVAX on Friday, with producer Serum Institute of India (SII) forecasting a significant rise in supplies beginning early next year.
The restart came as a new coronavirus type discovered in South Africa alarmed the world and prompted fresh travel restrictions.
SII, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, said it could resume exports because it had met its goal of producing 1 billion doses of the AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccine ahead of schedule.
A large portion of that output was used in India, which halted shipments eight months ago to inoculate its own people after an outbreak of disease.
SII has agreed to supply COVAX with up to 550 million doses of the vaccine, with the majority of the doses going to low-income nations. SII has only given COVAX roughly $30 million so far.
Since the halt in exports, SII’s manufacture of the vaccine, which it calls Covishield, has nearly doubled to as much as 240 million doses each month.
“SII’s supply of doses via COVAX is expected to increase substantially into Quarter 1, 2022,” it said.
With the resumption of exports, a spokeswoman for GAVI, which operates the COVAX program with the World Health Organization, stated that volumes delivered would swiftly grow, but did not provide any figures.
SII said it had previously manufactured over 1.25 billion Covishield doses and was now aiming to increase production of other vaccines, such as its licensed version of the Novavax (NVAX.O) vaccine.
On Friday, the business did not indicate how many dosages it was sending to COVAX. Covishield shipments to the global platform may not surpass 10 million doses for the rest of the year, according to a government official who spoke to Reuters last week.