Recent surge in India's Covid cases major contributor to rising global tally: Soumya Swaminathan, WHO's chief scientist

India's recent surge in Covid cases is a major contributor to the rising numbers in the world, World Health Organization’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said, but added overall India has been a positive story.

"For the last four weeks, we had been seeing a decline in weekly cases as well as deaths. Last week was the first week when the decline stopped,” Swaminathan said while speaking at Global Bio-India 2021, an event organised by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).

“Southeast Asia region is one of the regions to show an increase in cases, mainly driven by India, Indonesia, and Nepal," she said.


Two other regions — Europe and Latin America — are other major hotspots currently, she added.

India’s seven-day moving average of new cases has moved up from a low of just over 11,000 on February 12 to over 15,000 now following a sharp rise in Maharashtra among a few other states.

"Overall, India has been a positive story — whether you take diagnostics or the vaccine, the industry has stepped up to fill in the gaps," she added.

SII to produce 100 million doses a month from April
Suresh Jadhav, executive director (ED) of the Serum Institute of India, said that SII will scale up to create 100 million doses a month from April, from around 50 to 60 million currently.

He was speaking at the same event.

Speaking about the challenges SII faced during the early stages of creating the vaccine, Jadhav said that every company had to take stock of its current capacity and facilities to ascertain if it can carry out the production.

"When the company thinks about starting a new product, they have to think about scale-ups, infrastructure and equipment, and the availability of raw materials, which was a concern during the lockdown as transport was restricted," he said.

Currently, there are over 360 pharma companies the world over that are working in various stages to develop the vaccine.

Covaxin results
Bharat Biotech's ED Krishna Mohan said that the indigenously developed Covaxin was awaiting the interim analysis. The company has finished a trial with over 26,000 participants who have received both doses.

Mohan added that in the next two weeks, the vaccine's efficacy towards the South African and Brazillian strains should also be published.

On Monday, PM Narendra Modi became the first person to get inoculated under the second phase of the world's largest vaccination drive, getting Bharat Biotech's Covaxin. Home minister Amit Shah and defence minister S. Jaishankar also received their first doses; while Jaishankar was also administered Covaxin, it was unclear which vaccine Shah had received.