Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India (SII), expects the world to go back to the pre-Covid times by this time next year. At a global level, he said it would take a year to reach a stage of normality where no testing or precautions were required.
In comparison, India was in a good position as it had made huge strides in vaccinating a large population in such a small amount of time. “We are now very close to turning the tide on the pandemic,” Poonawalla said. However, he cautioned against early celebrations.
Poonawalla was speaking at the ‘FICCI HEAL 2021’ organised jointly with the ministry of health and family welfare and the NITI Aayog, after winning the Healthcare Personality of the Year award at the FICCI Healthcare Excellence Awards on Wednesday.
The award was a validation of all the risks and decisions taken in 2020 in building capacity, finding the right partner and scaling up, Poonawalla said.
This takes a lot of time and very few companies in the world were able to scale up fast and that was because of the calculated risks and decisions taken at the start of the pandemic, he added.
The country had administered 87.60 crore doses of SII’s Covishield Covid-19 vaccine till Wednesday.
