Why it's taking so long to increase vaccine supply

Each step in the vaccine making chain takes a lot of time. Besides, manufacturers face a shortage of raw materials and trained hands

- Abhilash Gaur

Do you check CoWin more than Facebook now? Germans are equally eager for vaccines. They even have a name — ‘impfneid’ — for the feeling you get when your neighbour is vaccinated but you aren’t.

How long will this ‘vaccine hunger’ last? In recent weeks some have suggested taking the technology from vaccine makers and passing it on to other pharma companies for faster production. But is it so easy to increase vaccine supply?

Patents not the real hurdle

Vaccines are a lot harder to make than medicines, experts say. It’s not like anyone with a formula can churn out shots. If knowhow was the only hurdle, we would have had a glut of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine.

A Stat report says Moderna last October decided not to enforce its Covid vaccine patents during the pandemic. Everyone was free to copy its vaccine. Eight months later, how many generic copies do we have?

A former US FDA official tells Stat: “There are currently no generic vaccines primarily because there are hundreds of process steps involved in the manufacturing of vaccines, and thousands of check points for testing to assure the quality and consistency of manufacturing.”