COVID will be eliminated in 2-3 years, says Adar Poonawalla

Adar Poonawalla, CEO, Serum Institute of India, while discussing the challenges of vaccine supply. He commented on what needs to be done to deal with this situation. He was addressing the India Global Forum 2021 on Wednesday. The second wave of corona has hit India hard. To cope with this situation, Adar has hired more and more staff at all his plants to make vaccines. Also, countries that have more capacity to develop vaccines should come forward to fight coronavirus, Adar said.

Adar said, "This pandemic is likely to end in 2-3 years. As such, we will have to significantly increase the production capacity of the vaccine. Another pandemic may occur within five years. We will have to start all over again. So why don't we develop our capacity for the next 15 years?"

Poonawala also said that he is confident that his corona vaccin Covishield will be approved by the European Medicine Agency in a month. Serum has applied through AstraZeneca, he said, and it was "just a matter of time" since the vaccine was approved by the World Health Organization and the U.K.'s health care regulator.

The UK MHRA, WHO approval process also took time and we applied to EMA. We are confident that the EMA will approve the Covishield vaccine in a month. He also said that it has been approved by WHO, England MHRA.