CEO of Serum Institute Adar Poonawalla moves to London

CEO of Serum Institute Adar Poonawalla moves to London

P

oonawalla, chief executive of the Serum Institute of India (SII) who manufactures the AstraZeneca vaccine has moved to the UK with his family "for  sometime," He did so just that the UK put India on its "red list" and banned all travellers from the country. Poonawalla said he took the initiative because it posed a serious threat to his life in India. “I will stay here for a long time because I don't want to go back to that situation… Everything falls on my shoulders but I can't do it alone… I don't want to be in a situation where you're good trying to do your job, and because you can't provide X, Y, or Z requirements you don't want to guess what they will do…,” said Adar.He further added 'Threats might be an understatement ... The level of anticipation and anger has never been seen. It's amazing. Everyone feels they should get a vaccine. They can’t understand why someone else should get it in front of them.

Poonawalla made the announcement shortly after speaking about the pressures he had on the production of Covid-19 vaccines to meet the growing demand in India. India's Covid-19 situation is so bad that the rich are fleeing the country including the vaccine czar Adar Poonawalla.

These suspected threats may have stemmed from the fact that India will still vaccinate the majority of its people, and drugs are available. SII’s Covidshield is the most common vaccine in the country, and Poonawalla has had to balance international contracts and domestic commitments over the past two months. The central government of India had provided Poonawalla "Y" level security on April 29, which meant that two private officers would accompany him at all times, and an armed guard would guard his home. Earlier this month, at his request, the Indian government again offered Poonawalla “under pressure” a high loan of Rs3,000 crore ($ 400 million) to increase production.

On Twitter on April 16, he also addressed US President Joe Biden to lift the ban on drug manufacturing, leading many to believe that Covidshield's production was delayed because of the issue. However, he later clarified that the ban only affected the production of Covovax, the Indian product of the vaccine Novovax. India has recently "released" its vaccination policy, allowing Poonawalla to sell Covidshield directly to the provinces for a premium of Rs 300 per dose (not the average government price of Rs150). With this goal, Poonawalla could sell half of his stock directly to provinces and private hospitals, leading to disputes over the availability of an already scarce drug.

But India's second catastrophic wave of Covid-19 was not the situation Poonawalla or the Indian government expected.  “We have been struggling in 2020 to fix everything. I thought I could put my feet up and take a vacation, but it turned out to be the opposite. There was chaos,” he said. Instead, he and his family had to parachute out of India - with all the death toll and deteriorating health care infrastructure - to a safer area of the developed world. Poonawalla said.

But these threats are not the only reason why Poonawalla is in the UK. Poonawalla also told in an interview that he would soon make an announcement about the production of his vaccines overseas.