India needs 1.7 billion Covid vaccine doses for adult population

New Delhi: The key vaccines India is banking on are from Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax and J&J and the earliest efficacy data is expected by the end of November-December 2020 and in the best case, vaccines can be rolled out in January 2021.

According to a research by Credit Suisse, India needs about 1.7 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses to vaccinate majority of its adult population. It targets to administer 400-500 million doses by July 2021.

"The key vaccines India is banking on are from Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax and J&J (temperature range is 2-8-degree Celsius) and the earliest efficacy data is expected by the end of November-December and in the best case, vaccines can be rolled out in January 2021," the report said.

Credit Suisse said there is sufficient capacity for vaccine manufacturing (more than 2.4 billion doses) and various components like vials, stoppers, syringes, gauze, alcohol swabs, etc.

The bottleneck is cold storage infrastructure (especially refrigerated vans) and by using a part of the capacity of current immunisation programme (600 million doses) and the cold chain infrastructure of the private sector (250-300 million doses), potential vaccinations can reach 550-600 million doses annually. Manpower required for administering the vaccine will be less than 1 lakh.

Aurobindo's large viral vector vaccine facility (300 million doses) should be ready by March-April 2021. The pricing in export markets could be higher than in India and profitability could be at Rs 20-25 per dose and, therefore, on a 300 million dose capacity, Aurobindo could benefit from a potential EBITDA of Rs 6-7.5 billion (or 12-15 per cent of FY22E EBITDA).

Cadila also has facility for 100 million doses but it is for DNA vaccine and, therefore, would not be able to manufacture vaccine from global players in the near term, the report said.

Apollo Hospitals has infrastructure to administer 100 million doses annually and this can add Rs 2.5 billion EBITDA.

Diagnostic companies (Metropolis) should also benefit from an increase in demand for antibody tests (both before and after vaccination) but their pricing can sharply come down.

Higher vaccination will impact volumes of Covid-19 treatment drugs. Cipla and Cadila have benefited the most from the sale of Covid-19 treatment drugs (especially Remdesivir) in 2Q FY21 and the volume should substantially reduce in FY22 on increasing vaccination. Continued on Page 5