India will not allow the export of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for several months, the head of Serum Institute of India, which has been contracted to make 1 billion doses of the vaccine for developing nations, said on Sunday, as per a report of our daily.
With rich nations reserving most of the vaccines that will be made this year, Serum Institute – the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer — is likely to make most of the inoculations for developing countries. The ban on exports, however, means that poorer nations will probably have to wait a few months before receiving their first shots.
The vaccine was granted emergency authorization by the Indian regulator on Sunday, but on the condition that Serum Institute doesn’t export the shots to ensure that vulnerable populations in India are protected, Adar Poonawalla, the company’s CEO, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
Serum Institute is also negotiating bilateral agreements with individual countries including Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Its unclear as to how it would affect the deal which we made with India as the government signed an agreement with Serum Institute of India Pvt Limited for procuring Covid-19 vaccine on December 13th. Under the deal, Bangladesh will import 3.0 billion doses of SARS-Cov-2 AZD 1222 (Oxford/Astrazeneca Vaccine), (5.0 million in each month) from Serum Institute of India in the next six months.
If we get the shots then its fine, but if we don’t, it once again shows our weakness of putting our eggs in one basket. Like onions India can stop the sending of vaccines to Bangladesh very easily if it wants to. What we should have done is to follow a more diversified policy to get vaccines from the other major players like Pfizer and Moderna.
We could in the meantime build up our infrastructure to enable the vaccines to be stored reliably in sub zero facilities. But instead we have followed our old policy of putting all our eggs in one basket — a policy which will most definitely not pay rich dividends. When will we learn to stand up for ourselves?
