You might have to wait a bit longer to receive your second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
This is after India, where the Serum Institute is headquartered, said it was “recalibrating the exports”, in a bid to balance the domestic demand with the international orders.
Kenya, and a host of other low and middle-income countries, depend on the United Nations-backed Covax facility, a multi-organisation global initiative to access Covid-19 vaccines.
Covax is the biggest customer of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
Last week, India put controls on the export of vaccine from the Serum Institute, where Covax, which supplies a host of African countries, including Kenya, gets its vaccines from. The controls were put in place “due to India’s surging domestic demand”, putting into doubt the deliveries of dozens of countries including Kenya.
“Given our current manufacturing capacity and requirements of national vaccination programmes, there may be a need to calibrate the supply schedules from time to time,” an Indian government official told UK’s Financial Times in confidence.
Last week, India ordered 100 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from the institute, taking all the doses the company will produce, and effectively locking out any exports.
Covax was expecting 40 million additional doses in this month, and up to 50 million doses in April. As of Sunday, the Covax facility had already supplied 28 million vaccine doses to 50 countries.
In a statement, Covax said it has already notified participating economies that deliveries of doses from Serum Institute will be delayed in March and April.
“The delays ... are due to the increased demand for vaccines in India. Separately, participating economies in the Covax facility that have been allocated doses from the AstraZeneca manufacturing network have been notified that some first deliveries anticipated in March will now take place in April,” it said.
This was the second setback Covax faced last week after production issues reported at a South Korean supplier meant delivery volumes had to be scaled back. With this confirmation, Kenya is staring at an anticipated delay in receiving the second consignment of vaccines, which were to land in early April from Covax. The country was expecting to receive 2.5 million doses between April and May from Covax.
According to Willis Akhwale, the head of the national Covid-19 vaccine deployment, Kenya decided to use all its 1.12 million vials to administer the first dose to as many people as it can.
The country will then move to give the second dose as soon as receives its next shipment of the Oxford/AstraZeneca (marketed as Covishield) expected in early April. The move, he said, is in line with Kenya’s vaccination plan where people are expected to receive two shots of the vaccine eight weeks apart.
“We are not worried about any delays since we are in the process of expanding our procurement options through other mechanisms like the Africa CDC. We are also looking into having bilateral agreements,” Dr Akhwale said.
