Indian Covid vaccine makers bank on boosters as demand crashes

Indian COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers are lobbying the government to approve boosters as supply exceeds demand so much that a drugmaker told Reuters it had suspended a plan to produce more than 100 million doses of Russia's Sputnik injection .

The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's largest vaccine maker, and Indian distributor of Sputnik, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, both said they've reached out to health authorities about boosters.

India has said its priority is to fully vaccinate all 944 million adults, although immunization experts are studying the need for boosters. India has given two doses to more than half of its adults and at least one dose to 86% of them.

Nearly 90% of the 1.3 billion total doses administered in India are the Covishield vaccine, a licensed version of the AstraZeneca injection manufactured by SII.

The government wants a total of 1.7 billion doses of vaccine to fully immunize most of its adults, and the SII plans to make the last of its pending orders to meet its share of that demand next week.

The SII has said it plans to halve its monthly production of Covishield, which amounted to 250 million doses, due to a lack of demand.

But only 1.2 million doses of Sputnik V have been administered in India, government data shows. About 4 million doses bottled in India with material imported from Russia have been exported, two sources said.

"At the moment there is no demand, the market is fully supplied by the Serum Institute. International supply is no longer an obstacle either."

An Indian pharmaceutical company that was supposed to produce more than 100 million doses of Sputnik has put the plan on hold without making a single commercial dose, said a source with direct knowledge of the decision.

RDIF declined to comment immediately.

The other vaccines under investigation or pending approval in India are: Bio E's protein subunit vaccine, Bharat Biotech's nasal vaccine and Gennova's mRNA vaccine.

The Indian government said in May that it expects 460 million doses of the three injections between August and December, but no commercial production has begun.

Bio E, Bharat Biotech, Cadila and the Indian Ministry of Health did not respond to requests for comment.

Vaccination for under-18s in India has not yet started, a market that most companies will be targeting after that.