Asian countries that led the way in controlling Covid-19 last year have become laggards in the battle against the virus, as their efforts to vaccinate their populations lag behind in other parts of the world.

Deployment issues vary from country to country, but in most countries in Asia one factor is constant: the lack of vaccines to administer. Having failed to develop or produce vaccines at home, many Asian countries have to wait for deliveries from Europe or the United States, leaving them at the end of the queue.

As Asia has become the world’s factory, constituting an increasingly dominant part of the global economy, the vaccine race has shown that it still lags behind in pharmaceuticals.

Among advanced economies, Japan, South Korea and Australia are lagging behind: Japan gave just 6.3 doses of the vaccine per 100 people, compared to 90 in the UK. In large developing economies, such as Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, vaccination campaigns have barely started.

India has a vast vaccine manufacturing capacity, but has only administered 14 injections per 100 people and is in the throes of a devastating outbreak of Covid-19. Even China, which contained the virus and created its own vaccines, gave just 36 doses per 100 people.

Scientists and industry analysts have pointed out several reasons why Asia has struggled. The region’s relative success in controlling Covid-19 meant less political pressure for vaccines. Fewer patients falling ill have led to slow results in clinical trials. And Asia lacks global pharmaceutical companies capable of enrolling patients worldwide.

“There is no equivalent of Pfizer in Asia,” said Ken Ishii, professor of vaccine science at the University of Tokyo.

The outbreaks of Sars, Mers, and avian influenza over the past decades meant that Asia’s public health systems were well prepared, but this had mixed implications for vaccines. China started taking vaccine development seriously after Sars, but Japan has spent billions of yen on a flu bite factory – bad technology for Covid-19.

India’s struggle

Perhaps the biggest vaccine surprise in Asia is India’s struggle. It is home to the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, which produces around 60-70 million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine per month.

India also has the capacity to develop its own vaccines. Bharat Biotech launched Covaxin, an inactivated coronavirus vaccine, which was approved for emergency use in January. However, the company’s production was limited to around 20 million doses per month.

Like several other countries in the region, India’s apparent success in controlling the virus meant governments were not investing in vaccines with the urgency of Europe or the United States, where the pandemic was raging. and normal life stopped.

“The government seriously believed that Covid-19 was going to go away in January, and it didn’t have a plan B,” said Murali Neelakantan, former global legal counsel to pharmaceutical companies Cipla and Glenmark.

Companies were unwilling to invest in increasing capacity because “the demand signal has been drowned out by the Indian government that the pandemic is over,” Neelakantan said. “It wouldn’t have cost a lot, that’s what hurts.”

Likewise, Japan has not prioritized vaccine development, Ishii said. Although researchers nationwide have produced several candidates – including cutting edge DNA and RNA jabs – none of them have advanced beyond small-scale trials.

Cutting-edge science

Japan is not unique in this, he said, pointing to countries like France and Switzerland and big pharmaceutical companies like GSK, Sanofi and Merck who have also struggled to offer vaccines.

What this showed, Ishii said, was the need to combine cutting edge science, the organizational clout of large pharmaceutical companies, and a cost-is-not-do attitude from government. “If BioNTech were just one company in Germany, it wouldn’t have been able to make the vaccine available like Pfizer has,” he said.

The situation is similar in South Korea, where the industry has focused on contract manufacturing, said a local analyst, who did not wish to be named. “It takes a lot of money, technology and researchers to develop new vaccines in a short period of time, but South Korea doesn’t have all of them,” the analyst said.

China is the Asian exception. Its success in the development and mass production of vaccines proves that this capability is not unique to Europe and the United States. Indeed, the slow progress of its vaccination campaign partly reflects Beijing’s determination to be a world leader in pharmaceuticals.

Chinese manufacturers are exporting nearly half of their production to keep Beijing’s diplomatic promises on vaccination abroad. Zhong Nanshan, a leading Chinese epidemiologist and government adviser, said this month that the vaccination rate remained “far from sufficient” to achieve herd immunity.

Over a five-year horizon, said Margaret Labban, senior life sciences analyst at IHS Markit in London: “We expect China to emerge as a truly global and competitive player in the biotech industry and completely reverse the traditional form of the pharmaceutical industry. innovation. “- Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021