The Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, let Africa down by pulling out of talks to supply Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines, according to John Nkengasong, Head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control (ACDC ).
Nkengasong said on Thursday that the institute created distrust that affected the demand for the vaccines.
He denounced recent comments from Serum that uptake of its COVID-19 shots had slowed because of low demand from Africa and vaccine hesitancy.
He said the real problem was that Serum had acted unprofessionally.
Serum did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Nkengasong said Serum had engaged in discussions last year with the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT).
“At one point I believed a deal was very close, but then Serum abruptly ended the talks.
“Serum just decided to act in a very unprofessional manner and stop communicating with AVATT team.
“ So that created a situation where we found ourselves extremely unhappy and then engaged with Johnson & Johnson,” he said.
He added that African countries had agreed to buy 400 million doses of COVID vaccines from J&J, abandoning efforts with Serum.
Earlier in 2021, India decided to ban vaccine exports as domestic infections soared, which had created further distrust abroad and that explained the lack of demand from Africa for Serum’s vaccines.
“If now Serum is shipping vaccines to COVAX, I don’t know the mechanics of what volumes they are shipping to COVAX.
“But it will not surprise me that countries are now looking as if we needed you and you were not there for us,’’ he said.
Global vaccine-sharing network COVAX is still seeing strong demand for Serum’s AstraZeneca shot, one of its backers GAVI said on Thursday, following comments from Serum that uptake had slowed.
Nkengasong described as “condescending” comments by Adar Poonawalla, the Chief Executive of Serum, in a recent interview with a British newspaper about low demand from Africa.
Although vaccine supplies have started increasing to Africa, where just 7.5 per cent of its more than one billion people are fully vaccinated, many African nations are finding it difficult to manage the shots.
Up to a million unused vaccine doses supplied via COVAX are estimated to have expired in Nigeria in November underscoring the difficulty African countries have getting shots in arms.
