RIDING THE VACCINE WAVE
25%
Share of world Covid-19 vaccines to be produced in India
$93 billion
The size of the global vaccine market due to Covid-19 pandemic, from $41.6 billion in 2018
100+
Countries where Indian vaccines will be supplied
“Normally, it doesn't make a great business case, especially between two outbreaks,” Vasant Narasimhan, global CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical multinational Novartis AG, said in an exclusive interview to BT in February 2020. He was reacting to why leading global drug discovery firms were least interested in developing vaccines against viral infections such as Covid-19.
At that point, the novel coronavirus infection that would swamp the world in the following months and drag down the global economy on a scale never seen in a century was still a curious virus surfacing in Far East Asia. India barely had three cases of Covid-19 even though the virus had surfaced in Wuhan three months earlier in mid-November 2019. And the World Health Organization (WHO) was yet to declare the outbreak a pandemic.
Within weeks, though, conventional logic that shunned vaccine development was getting re-written as nationwide lockdowns to check Covid-19 pandemic were costing the global economy $375 billion every month, besides lakhs of deaths and crumbling healthcare infrastructure in large parts of the world. Countries and philanthropies began to pledge unprecedented sums to fund research for vaccines. The WHO Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator to fight the disease mobilised over $5 billion, the US set aside $9.5 billion and a European Commission-led initiative announced plans to raise $4 billion.
The biggest-ever hunt for a drug in human history started with over 320 Covid-19 vaccines under development globally. Narasimhan himself became the co-chair of a consortium of leading global life sciences companies to develop and supply vaccines, drugs, diagnostics and treatments for Covid-19. With billions of dollars up for grabs, vaccines are finally making a business case.
With that, India is emerging as the world’s vaccine factory. Nearly 25 per cent of the world’s Covid-19 vaccines will
