Thread by @sritara

THREAD on BBIL’s saga of an incredibly spun yarn, based on its most recent release, today.
1. Starts with a treatise on vaccine making for the intellectually-challenged journalists - “complex and multifactorial process” with 100s of steps, it says.

2. Explains how the regulatory pathway is complex and takes time, effort, coordination with supply chains, etc. Generally, more fluff

3. Now comes to the real deal - that scaling production is a "step-by-step process". (BTW, what manufacturing process isn’t?). But here’s the innocently-couched punch: “There is a four-month lag time for COVAXIN to translate into actual vaccination.”

4. So, a batch takes 120 days, says BBIL. Batches initiated in March “will be ready for supply only during the month of June. Even a fresher in industry will tell you batch processing does not happen sequentially. If companies did that they would take eternity to make a product.

5. In reality, a source in the world of biologics tells me that batches go through steps like I an assembly line. While Batch 1 goes through step one and moves to Step 2, another batch moves to Step 1, and so on. This is not rocket science.

6. It is just manufacturing processes perfected over more than a 100 years. The source sited above tells me a that in a well-coordinated assembly line the gap between batches would not be more than a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks or so.

7. The rest of the release is just an attempt to transfer his burden to others (like CDSCO). The last para is just padding.

8. The crucial issue for Indians scrounging for that elusive Covaxin shot is this: BBIL appears to have serious issues scaling up capacity. But even milord importantly, it is unwilling to accept. Instead it is spinning tales based on mumbo jumbo.

9. But even more scandalous in this is the role of the entity that holds the IPR for Covaxin: the Govt. It has been - unwittingly or wickedly, it doesn’t really matter which — been happy to accept the wondrous tales spun by its client.

10. The statement by BBIL shows that the tail is wagging the dog. You can go figure who the tail is and the dog in this story is. (END)

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