India restarts Covid vaccine production as new infections soar 30% in one day

Health officials conduct nationwide mock drills to test preparedness for Covid

India is ramping up its vaccine production following a rapid surge in Covid-19 cases driven by a new subvariant dubbed Arcturus.

The country recorded 10,158 news Covid cases on Thursday, a 30 per cent surge in one day, according to the federal health ministry data.

The XBB.1.16 strain, a sub-variant of Omicron, has been found in 22 countries, including Singapore, Australia, the UK and the US. It is believed to be responsible for the uptick in infections in India and seems to exhibit unique symptoms in children, one of which is conjunctivitis.

Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine producer, has restarted the manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines, the chief executive Adar Poonawalla said.

The Pune-based company produces AstraZeneca vaccines under the label Covishield, which constitutes at least 70 per cent of the Covid vaccines administered in the country.

“Just as a precaution, we have done it so that people have Covishield as a choice if they want it,” Mr Poonawalla told the Press Trust of India.

He added that the company will produce 6-7 million doses of Covishield in 90 days and it could take up to nine months to further build up the stock, based on demand.

The company stopped manufacturing Covishield in December 2021 due to dwindling demand and a low number of cases; it already has a stock of 6 million doses of Covovax, a version of a Novavax vaccine.

Bharat Biotech, which makes India's domestically-produced Covaxin, said it will wait for demand to rise before resuming production. It was the second-most administered vaccine in the country.

“Covaxin is available for supplies based on demand,” the Hyderabad-based vaccine maker said. “We have more than 200 million doses of Covaxin in bulk form,” the company said, according to The Hindu.

The company halted production of Covaxin in early 2022 due to a lack of demand and was reportedly forced to destroy around 50 million doses of the vaccine.

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid technical lead, said the XBB.1.16 strain has been in circulation for a few months. “We haven’t seen a change in severity in individuals or in populations,” she said. “It has one additional mutation in the spike protein, which in lab studies shows increased infectivity as well as potential increased pathogenicity.”

India’s health ministry launched mock drills this week in an attempt to see if hospitals are prepared to deal with a possible influx of patients. Wearing face coverings in public has been made compulsory again in some states for the first time in more than a year.

India was devastated by the Delta wave in 2021 with a total of 4.7 million deaths, according to WHO estimates.