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* COVAX goal held back by India export restrictions
* Gavi also cites lower output by Astra, J&J
* Regulatory review of Clover, Novavax shots delayed
* Gavi CEO says opposes wide use of booster shots
(Adds details on disease burden, GAVI quote)
By Ludwig Burger and Alistair Smout
Sept 8 (Reuters) - The global programme providing COVID-19
vaccines to poor countries is on course to fall nearly 30
percent short of its previous goal of 2 billion shots this year,
the international organisations running it said on Wednesday.
The head of the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, which sponsors the
COVAX programme along with the World Health Organisation, Unicef
and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI),
pleaded with rich countries to share more doses.
In a joint statement, the organisations blamed the decision
to cut COVAX's target to 1.425 billion doses on a range of
factors including export restrictions on the Serum Institute of
India (SII), a major supplier.
Manufacturing problems at Johnson & Johnson and
AstraZeneca as well as delays in the regulatory review
of shots developed by U.S. biotech firm Novavax and
China's Clover Biopharmaceuticals also hurt supplies, they said.
"This is of course bad for the whole world as we’ve seen the
dreadful consequences that take hold when the virus is left to
roam unchecked," Gavi Chief Executive Seth Berkley told
journalists in a briefing.
"We cannot afford further delays" while groups such as
health care workers and the elderly still need protection in
lower-income nations, he added.
The joint statement said the 2 billion dose milestone for
COVAX was now projected to be hit in the first quarter of 2022.
More than 221 million people have been reported to be
infected by the coronavirus globally and 4.76 million have died,
according to a Reuters tally.
Berkley said countries that had met their domestic needs
should forfeit further volumes they had secured. Some rich
countries are planning to administer third shots, over concerns
that protection from the standard two-shot regimen is waning,
but Berkley said there was no scientific validation for the need
for such widespread booster shots.
"If we had unlimited supplies of vaccines, we often use
vaccines off label, we can use them in experimental fashions,
but I think right now we need to stick to where they're needed,"
he added.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Alistair Smout; editing by
Jason Neely)
