Share vaccine formula with pharma companies to scale up production: Kejriwal to PM

New Delhi: With several states grappling with a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, saying the Centre should share the vaccine formula of the two manufacturers with other capable pharmaceutical companies to scale up production in the country.

In his letter to Modi, Kejriwal said the entire country can be provided a “safety cover” by allowing more companies to manufacture the vaccines on a war footing ahead of the third wave of the pandemic.

He said the Centre can also terminate the monopoly on vaccine production through the patent law.

There are two vaccine makers in the country currently — Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute of India — which are manufacturing Covaxin and Covishield respectively.

The two vaccine manufacturers can be given royalty from the profit of other companies for the use of their original formulas, Kejriwal said.

“Presently, only two companies are manufacturing vaccines in India. Providing vaccines to the whole country through two companies only is not possible. It requires ramping up vaccine manufacturing at war footing. I request you to grant permission for mass production of the vaccines,” he wrote in his letter to Modi.

Earlier in the day, Kejriwal told an online press briefing that the Centre has the power to do so at such difficult times.

There is an urgent need to ramp up the manufacturing of vaccines on a war footing while developing a national policy to inoculate everyone in the next few months, he said.

“Delhi is facing a shortage of vaccines. Some states have not even started inoculation because they do not have the required number of doses. The vaccine shortage has become a big challenge for the country,” the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo said.

He said the Centre should ensure that all the vaccine manufacturing plants in the country start producing COVID-19 vaccines.

“The two vaccine companies in the country are currently producing around six-seven crore doses per month. At this rate, it will take two years to vaccinate everyone. Who knows how many waves of COVID will pass us by then and what will be extent of the destruction.

“The Centre should take the vaccine formula from these two companies and provide it to all those companies that can safely manufacture the vaccines,” Kejriwal said.

“We have excellent industrialists, pharmaceutical companies that are the largest in the world and the best scientists. I believe that if given a chance, they will extend their full cooperation,” he added.

Delhi has started inoculating people against the viral disease at a rapid pace and currently, around 1.25 lakh doses of the vaccines are being administered daily, the chief minister said, adding that this will be scaled up to over three lakh doses in the coming days.

“We aim to vaccinate everyone in Delhi in the next three months, but the shortage of vaccines is a major problem,” he said.

Kejriwal said the national capital was left with vaccine doses for only a few more days and added that his government has been working on ramping up the oxygen and ICU facilities in the city for the last few days.

Delhi recorded 12,481 fresh COVID-19 cases on Tuesday while the death toll due to the viral disease climbed to 20,010 with 347 more people succumbing to it.

According to a bulletin issued by the city government’s health department, the test positivity rate stands at 17.76 per cent in the national capital.