The Indian Serum Institute has left Africa on vaccines: Africa CDC | Coronavirus pandemic News

The African health care provider denounces Serum’s latest comments from the continent for the low demand against COVID-19.

The Indian Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker, has left Africa in talks to supply COVID-19 vaccines, creating mistrust in demand, according to the head of the African Centers for Disease Control.

John Nkengasong on Thursday complained of Serum’s latest comments that COVID-19 shots had slowed down due to low demand in Africa and doubts about vaccination, saying the real problem was that Serum acted unprofessionally.

Nkengasong said Serum had discussions with the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) last year, and at one point he thought the deal was too tight, but then Serum abruptly ended the talks.

“Serum decided to act in a very unprofessional way and stop communicating with the AVATT team, so it created a situation where we found ourselves very unhappy … and then we contacted Johnson & Johnson,” he said.

African countries have agreed to buy 400 million doses of J & Jri COVID vaccines, aside from efforts with Serum, he said.

Then in 2021, India decided to ban the export of vaccines as internal infections increased, which led to more mistrust abroad, which explained the lack of demand for serum vaccines from Africa, Nkengasong said.

“Now that Serum is vaccinating COVAX, I don’t know the mechanics of the volumes that are being sent to COVAX, but I’m not surprised that countries are now looking at that (thinking) ‘OK, we needed you and you. They weren’t for us,'” he said.

Global COVAX Vaccine Sharing Network is still seeing high demand for Serum’s AstraZeneca shot, GAVI said one of its sponsors said on Thursday, after Serum’s comments, its use had slowed.

Comments ‘codendents’

Nkengasong said in a recent interview with Adar Poonawallak, the CEO of Serum, in the British newspaper The Times, that his comments on low demand in Africa were “condescending”.

“It’s a combination of the vaccine’s hesitation and the nations, not appearing and ordering, especially the African nations,” Poonawall said.

“I’m happy to say that this is recorded and I hope to read it, maybe because they will be activated and they will do something.”

Although the supply of vaccines to Africa has begun to increase, with only 7.5 percent of its more than 1 billion population fully vaccinated, many African nations are seeing that they do not have the capacity to manage shootings.

One million doses of COVAX-supplied vaccine have been estimated to have expired in Nigeria last month, underscoring the difficulty of African countries in receiving firearms, Reuters news agency reported this week.