India is earning accolades and a truckload of appreciation worldwide for exporting millions of its covid-19 vaccine across the globe, absolutely free of cost. While this humanitarian work is commendable enough, the question is as to why the government is busy shipping out the precious vaccine to other nations instead of releasing it in the Indian private market for citizens to get administered with the shot?
The Serum Insititute of India manufactured Covishield is being transported to 13 countries including Brazil, Morocco, Bhutan, Mongolia, Oman, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Maldives, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Seychelles, Myanmar, and Nepal.
This question is getting raised by many leading health and pharma experts like Kiran Mazumdar Shaw who has also requested the Centre to permit private firms to release the shot as it is a known fact that India not only has enough vaccines but is also comfortably meeting the goals set.
As such, she posted on Twitter saying, “We need to vaccinate 2m per day unless private hospitals start vaccinating the general population we will struggle to keep pace with vaccine production which far outweighs utilization. Unlike other countries, we don’t have a shortage of supplies.”
However, the government is not willing to roll out the vaccine publicly.
Niti Aayog’s Dr. VK Paul said, “Prioritisation is a must in this process and all nations are following it. If you are healthy and below 50 years of age, you please wait and let those citizens who need it more get it… in the spirit of public health response, in the spirit of our societal responsibility.”
Referring to the priority list created much before the vaccine was ready, he said, “In the first seven to eight months, we are focused on the 30-crore people, about which we have talked quite often and we know who those people are, who are the needier”.
According to the list, the vaccine will be first given to 1 crore healthcare workers and 2 crore frontline workers. This will be followed by 27 crore people who fall under the vulnerable category- people aged 50 years & above and those having comorbidities.
India has left even China behind and is the largest manufacturer of covid-19 vaccines in the world today. SII is producing 5000 doses of the vaccine every single minute, meaning that it is manufacturing 50 million doses every month. The production is slated to increase by 30% by March end– translating to 65 million doses.
Currently, the Centre has taken 11 million doses for administering the vaccine to the listed people and exporting it to other countries. 50 million more doses are still present in stock.
A major part of this figure is being sent to nations like South Africa, Morocco, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia for commercial purposes. This export is to make sure the vaccine does not expire as it has a shelf life of 6 months only. The stock that India has will begin expiring come March.
