India and US will stop export of vaccine raw materials

China: India and the United States have agreed to ban the export of vaccine raw materials. According to the international news agency Reuters

The United States will soon lift the ban on vaccine raw materials. The two countries’ foreign sources said on Monday that India and the United States would suspend exports of raw materials.

Washington has invoked the wartime powers of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to preserve vaccine raw materials for its own companies, but the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine maker, has said this went against the global goal of sharing vaccines equitably.

Asked about the restrictions on exports, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said inequities in access to vaccines were “completely unacceptable,” but declined to detail additional U.S. action to address that.

The potential movement on raw materials comes days after the SII chief executive tweeted directly to Biden to end the supply curb.

The company’s chief executive Adar Poonawalla said at a World Bank panel on Wednesday that the sharing of critical raw materials is going to be a critical and limiting factor in global vaccination efforts.

 SII is licensed to make the AstraZeneca shot as well as another developed by U.S. company Novavax. In November last year, the U.S. major pharma company Pfizer cut short its COVID-19 production target by half, citing raw material crunch.

In response, Biden signed the DPA to ensure domestic supply, as an effort to fullfill his promise of administering 100 million coronavirus vaccines within the first 100 days of his presidency.