Adar Poonawalla of the Serum Institute has arrived inBritain on business and to escape the desperate situation in India whereCovid-19 is raging like “a tornado”
The phone calls are the worst thing, says AdarPoonawalla, the biggest manufacturer of vaccines in the world. They areincessant and very menacing, adds the man whose Serum Institute is producing 90percent of India’s Covid-19 vaccines at a time when the pandemic is rampagingthrough the second most populous country on Earth, causing fear, panic anddeath on an appalling scale.
The calls come from some of the most powerful men inIndia. They come from the chief ministers of Indian states, heads of businessconglomerates, and others demanding instant supplies of Covishield, as theAstraZeneca vaccine is known in India. “ ‘Threats’ is an understatement,”Poonawalla says. “The level of expectation and aggression is reallyunprecedented. It’s overwhelming. Everyone feels they should get the vaccine.They can’t understand why anyone else should get it before them.”
The calls begin cordially, but when Poonawalla explainsthat he cannot possibly meet the callers’ demands “the conversations go in avery different direction”, he says. “They are saying if you don’t give us thevaccine it’s not going to be good . . . It’s not foul language. It’s the tone.It’s the implication of what they might do if I don’t comply. It’s takingcontrol. It’s coming over and basically surrounding the place and not lettingus do anything unless we give in to their demands.”
The calls, and throngs of desperate people who gatheroutside the Serum Institute’s 100-acre, state-of-the-art campus in Pune, 90miles east of Mumbai, explain why Poonawalla has been offered a governmentsecurity detail, and why the campus now has round-the-clock police protection.
They are partly why Poonawalla flew to London to join hiswife and two children hours before Britain banned travelers from India eightdays ago. “I’m staying here an extended time because I don’t want to go back tothat situation,” he says. “Everything falls on my shoulders but I can’t do italone . . . I don’t want to be in a situation where you are just trying to doyour job, and just because you can’t supply the needs of X, Y or Z you reallydon’t want to guess what they are going to do.”
He is also here on business. He says he is planning tostart vaccine production in countries outside India. Would that includeBritain? “There’s going to be an announcement in the next few days,” he repliescoyly, but it is worth noting that Lord Udny-Lister, until recently one ofBoris Johnson’s top aides visited the Serum Institute in March, and that theprime minister was also due to visit it on his canceled trip to India this week.
The Poonawalla's are now the sixth richest family in India with a jet-setting lifestyleto match. Poonawalla and his glamorous wife, Natasha, have luxurious homes inPune, Mumbai, and London, paintings by Picasso, Dali, Rembrandt, and Rubens,private planes, a helicopter, and a collection of 35 classic cars.
When Covid-19 appeared at the start of 2020 Poonawallatook a huge gamble. Long before he knew whether a vaccine would be forthcoming,he began dramatically expanding his production facilities and signed a deal toproduce a billion doses of whatever the Oxford University-AstraZenecaresearchers came up with.
He struck gold. By the time the AstraZeneca vaccine wasapproved in January he had increased his annual production capacity from 1.5 to2.5 billion doses at a cost of $800 million, and stockpiled 50 million doses ofCovishield. He began exporting to 68 developing countries — and Britain —because India itself appeared to have defeated the pandemic. “India has savedhumanity from a big disaster by containing [Covid-19] effectively,” NarendraModi, its prime minister, boasted to January’s online World Economic Forum inDavos.
“I thought, ‘We’ve done our bit,’ ” Poonawalla sayswryly. “We’d struggled through 2020 to get everything ready. I thought I couldput my feet up and take a vacation, but it’s been the exact opposite. It’s beenchaotic.”
Modi was guilty of hubris. Since March Covid-19 has ragedacross India like “a tornado”, says Poonawalla. The country’s health system hasall but collapsed. Its cities are designating parks and car parks for funeralpyres but running out of wood.
Amazingly the government has continued to permit electionrallies, test matches, and religious festivals like the Kumbh Mela, whichattracts millions of pilgrims. The novelist Arundhati Roy has accused Modi’sadministration of an “outright crime against humanity”, but Poonawalla declinesan invitation to apportion blame. “If I give you the right answer, or anyanswer, my head would be chopped off . . . I can’t comment on the elections orKumbh Mela. It’s too sensitive,” he says before adding: “I don’t think even Godcould have forecast it was going to get this bad.”
The institute is now being accused of profiteering.Hitherto it has sold all its supplies to the government at a price of 150rupees ($2) per dose, which barely covered its costs. From next week it cansell half its production to states and private hospitals and will charge 300rupees ($4) a dose to the former and 600 rupees ($8) to the latter. Poonawallacalls the profiteering charge “totally incorrect”. He acknowledges theinstitute will make money from the higher price but insists Covishield willstill be “the most affordable vaccine on the planet”.
Poonawalla finds himself in a unique and remarkableposition as mankind fights the most deadly pandemic of modern times, one thathas already cost more than three million lives. “I’ve always had this sense ofresponsibility to India and the world because of the vaccines we were making,but never have we made a vaccine so needed in terms of saving lives,” he says.
The pressures are correspondingly enormous. He will notsay if Modi calls him in person, but acknowledges regular conversations “at thehighest levels” of government. He occasionally plays tennis to relax, but nolonger dares to ride for fear of injuring himself. “It’s very stressful. There’sno other way to describe it. There’s no silver bullet. We just have to managethe situation and save as many lives as we can,” he says. At times “I’vestruggled, I tell you. It’s been a rollercoaster of a ride . . . I’ve lost alot of hair, to say the least.”
Initially, he felt “a proud sense and feeling that peoplewere depending on me, and I was doing my best to save and protect the nationand the world”, but he admits feeling disheartened by what he describes as thepresent negativity towards the institute. Despite all the “sweat and tears”,instead of being “appreciated and supported”, he complains, “we are beingvilified and blamed”.
He hopes that posterity will judge him more favorably.“That’s what calms me down,” he says. “We have done the best we can withoutcutting corners or doing anything wrong or profiteering. I’ll wait for historyto judge.” In the meantime, he hopes other Indian vaccine manufacturers willstep forward in the coming months so “people will forget about me”.