China covid crisis: China asked to take some of our vaccines as booster, says Adar Poonawalla

China covid crisis: Serum Institute of India's CEO Adar Poonawalla on Tuesday said that his company is trying to convince China to buy two of its key vaccines for Covid-19 -- Covovax and Covishield – in a bid to tackle the current outbreak. 

Poonawalla, who is in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum Meet, told NDTV that its Covovax is certified and works well against Omicron, which is now the dominant variant in China. Poonawalla said Covovax’s response is two or three times higher than even Covishield's.

“It is very important for the world to get back to its supply chain issues and investment… (so) it is better for the world that China recovers from this," said SII chief Adar Poonawalla, further adding, "We are trying to engage with China and telling them to set aside political differences, issues, and apprehensions and take some of the western vaccines as a booster."

Poonawalla when asked about China’s response to his offer, said that are deciding which way they want to go.
The new vaccine will cost around Rs 200-300 and will soon be on the Centre's CoWin app, he said. 

China has approved vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm to vaccinate people against the Omicron variant. But as per experts several studies have found that these jabs are less effective against the Omicron variant. 

The recent Covid-19 outbreak in China is predicted to be a more severe wave than before, experts have said. Last week, China reported nearly 60,000 deaths related to the Covid-19 outbreak since early December, which saw overcrowded hospitals and packed crematoriums. China lifted its "zero-COVID" measures in December 2022. COVID cases are now surging, although official data is patchy. The government is still releasing little data on the current status. As per the data released by the National Health Commission, the total toll included 5,503 deaths due to respiratory failure caused by Covid-19 and 54,435 fatalities from other ailments combined with Covid-19 since December 8. This is almost a ten-fold increase from previously reported figures. But global experts are predicting that the situation in China is worse than what has been reported and have said that China could see more than a million Covid-related deaths this year.

Analytics company Airfinity, which had predicted two waves in China, with the number of deaths in a single day peaking at 25,000, has now said that the country can see one larger wave and consequent prolonged waves with infections reaching a higher peak.

Also read: Davos 2023: World will not be China centric for very long, says Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer

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