[News] Five dead in fire at the largest vaccine producer; millions of doses of AstraZeneca are produced there

[EvKirito]

 

Five people died in the fire that occurred Thursday at one of the facilities of the Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, located in western India, from which coronavirus vaccines will be exported to countries such as Brazil.

"Five people died" in the fire, Pune Mayor Murlidhar Mohol, the Indian city where this plant is located, told reporters.

The president of the company, Adar Poonawala, sent his condolences to the families from his account on Twitter.

Indian televisions showed a huge gray smoke over the headquarters of the Serum Institute, where millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford are currently being produced.

However, according to these media and the company itself, the fire was declared in a place that is under construction, away from the facilities where vaccines are manufactured.

"The vaccine production facilities were not affected and the fire will have no impact on production," a source from the Serum institute told AFP, confirming that "the fire occurred in the new factory under construction."

Neither the police nor the company have ruled so far on the causes of the fire.

In total, India plans to export and in some cases donate 20 million doses, to countries in South Asia, Latin America, Africa and Central Asia. Since Wednesday, the first shipments have already left for Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Vaccine shipments to Brazil have been delayed several times and last week, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro admitted there was "political pressure" on the Indian government to prioritize vaccinating its inhabitants.

Faced with the successive delays, Bolsonaro sent a letter to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting "the urgent supply of the two million doses."

Adar Poonawalla, the president of Serum, told the Times of India newspaper that he will supply the two million doses to Brazil in two weeks.

The "pharmacy of the world"

India, with 1,300 million inhabitants, is, in figures, the second country in the world most affected by covid-19, after the United States, with 152,869 deaths and 10.6 million infections, but its mortality rate is low.

The country launched one of the world's most ambitious vaccination campaigns on Saturday, to immunize 300 million people through July.

In early January, two vaccines were approved in the country: Covishield, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford and produced by the Serum Institute; and Covaxin, manufactured by local company Bharat Biotech.

The Serum Institute, founded in 1966 by Cyrus Poonawalla, the father of the current president of the company, produces 1.5 billion doses of vaccines a year, making it the world's leading producer, even before the new coronavirus broke out.

Vaccines against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B, mumps, measles and rubella leave the factory and are exported to more than 170 countries.

"The world's pharmacy will accept the challenge of covid-19," assured the Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs, S. Jaishankar, on his Twitter account.