INDIAN BILLIONAIRES FUND COVID-19 VACCINE TRY

The world’s largest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute, which is controlled by a small and very rich Indian family, has teamed up with scientists from the University of Oxford, who are developing a promising coronavirus vaccine, according to The New York Times.

The company plans to mass-produce hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine, which is still in clinical trials and might not even work. But if it does, Adar Poonawalla, the chief executive of Serum, will have on hand what everyone wants — and possibly in huge quantities — before anyone else.

Mr. Poonawalla says that he will split the vaccine doses he produces 50-50 between India and the rest of the world, with a focus on poorer countries. The Serum Institute is steered by only two men: Mr. Poonawalla and his father, Cyrus, a horse breeder who became a billionaire.

Vaccines take time not just to perfect but to manufacture. More than one project is conducting these two processes simultaneously and starting production now, while the vaccines are still in trials. That way, if and when a vaccine is approved — at best within the next six months, though no one really knows — doses will be on hand.

U.S. and European governments have sealed billions of dollars in deals with pharmaceutical giants like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Sanofi and AstraZeneca to speed up the development and production of select vaccine candidates in exchange for hundreds of millions of doses.