Thread by @sritara

A thread on the Centre’s projected supplies of Covid vaccines.
1. This is based on the Govt’s latest affidavit. We are told that 1350 m doses are coming between Aug and Dec. The chart depicts the pipe dream

2. The only possible credible number in that chart pertains to project supplies of Covishield, by SII. It is to supply 500 m doses out if a total of 1350 doses b/w Aug and Dec 2021 - @ of 3.33 m doses/day.

3. This is feasible at a stretch because we k ow SII has supplied @ 3.04 m doses/day in June (1-22) that I have tracked. For the sake of India’s horribly jinxed vaccine story so far, I hope this materialises.

4. This is because the rest of the projected supply looks highly iffy. Covaxin, the other vaccine, produced by BBIL, is to account for 400 m doses in the same time period. Covaxin is to account for 30 per cent of all vaccine supplies.

5. This means the daily projected strike rate is to be 2.67 m doses per day in those 5 months. But we know that in June so far avg per day Covaxin supplies have only been a measly 0.51 m doses.

6. This is less than one-fifth of the asking rate in Aug-Dec. To expect vaccine supplies to rise as spectacularly as the Govt claims is to ask us to suspend our senses. The claimed numbers of other vaccine candidates in that list are also suspect.

7. 300 m doses are to come from a protein subunit vaccine, a vaccine from a platform that is not yet out in the world in any meaningful quantity anywhere in the world.

8. Novavax the American big daddy in this business is still struggling, and we are told that Biological E’s version will not only be up and ready but available in significant quantities in the next few months.

9. The vaccine has not yet undergone trials, let alone limited scales of production to be anything other than a grand pipe dream. Prof Satyajit Rath lucidly explains the problems in scaling up here frontline.thehindu.com/covid-19/inter…

10. Zydus Cadila is to account for 50 m doses but this too shares the same fate as the previously mentioned one. Mind you, both of these are exciting new platforms and worthy of celebration, but to claim that they will be available in plenty very soon is sheer baloney.

11. 100 m doses are expected b/w Aug and Dec but even this depends on a significant ramp up of Sputnik manufacturing capacity in the next few months, which is extremely unlikely. As we have seen, supplies of Sputnik from overseas has been only in a trickle.

12. In the first 3 weeks of June less than 50000 doses had been delivered. It is obvious that supplies will have to come from within India. One producer recently explained to me the difficulties - frontline.thehindu.com/covid-19/inter…

13. It is obvious from the aforesaid that at the most - and at a stretch - at the most only about half of the 1350 m doses projected over the 5-month period are likely too materialise.

14. The rest is part of the NaMo regime’s favourite game of forever pushing solutions of problems deeper and deeper into the future — like a truant child who pretends that it can never be found out. (END)

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