COVID vaccine patent waiver won’t solve demand-supply gap, says Sanford Bernstein's Nithya Balasubramanian

“It is good news that IP is likely to waive off some of these vaccines that have been developed in the US like Pfizer. If licenses are made available what this means is that Indian manufacturers could potentially manufacture these without fear of IP infringement,” she explained.

She also warned that, “The challenge I think is that one the technology - both the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine are based on mRNA technology. Now, these are not vaccines that Indian manufacturers have made before so if you look at Indian manufacturers these are not companies that have experience in making mRNA vaccines before. But that being said I don’t think it is rocket science. With the capabilities that these companies have they should be able to figure it out.”

On stocks that will benefit Balasubramanian said, “In terms of listed names of course Dr Reddy's Laboratories is likely to benefit because they have licenses as Sputnik V vaccine for which they have emergency use authorisation. My understanding is that in the next 3 months they are likely to import about 35-40 million doses of the vaccine and now that the private market is also opened we can expect that DRL will benefit from selling this Sputnik V vaccine in the private market.”

“The other listed names that come to my mind, I don’t cover these names, so Zydus Cadila is the other player which has an indigenously developed DNA vaccine. They are wrapping up phase III clinical trials, so again an emergency use authorisation in the near term is a likelihood.”

“Gland Pharma is also likely to benefit,” she added.