[Early in the pandemic, Serum
Institute formed a partnership to produce the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. By
this year, it had already stockpiled 80 million doses. Some of that production
will be delivered this month to the Covax initiative backed by the World
Health Organization to distribute vaccines to poorer countries.]
India’s government has made the
calculation that it has enough vaccine doses to share. The result is a form of
vaccine diplomacy that appears to be unlike any other in the world.
Since Wednesday, the Indian
government has sent free doses to Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives —
more than 3.2 million in total. Donations to Mauritius, Myanmar and
Seychelles are set to follow. Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are next on the
list.
The shipments reflect one of
India’s unique strengths: It is home to a robust vaccine industry,
including Serum Institute of India, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers.
Early in the pandemic, Serum
Institute formed a partnership to produce the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. By
this year, it had already stockpiled 80 million doses. Some of that production
will be delivered this month to the Covax initiative backed by the World
Health Organization to distribute vaccines to poorer countries.
On Thursday, a fire broke out at a
building under construction at Serum Institute’s headquarters in which five
people died, New Delhi Television reported. Serum Institute said
the blaze would not impact its production of the AstraZeneca vaccine
In the race to combat the pandemic,
several countries are using vaccine production as a route to enhance their
global influence. But the Indian government seems to be the first to deliver
multiple gifts to neighboring countries.
China has made a concerted push to
sell its vaccines to countries around the globe for months but only recently
announced donations to Myanmar, Cambodia and the Philippines.
It is not clear if the free vaccines have been shipped.
On Thursday, Pakistan’s foreign
minister had a call with his Chinese counterpart and announced that China would
donate 500,000
vaccine doses by Jan. 31.
India’s diplomatic initiative has
its own hashtag — #VaccineMaitri, or vaccine friendship — and received a
high-profile plug from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India is “deeply honoured
to be a long-trusted partner in meeting the healthcare needs of the global
community,” he wrote on
Twitter.
The push comes at a time when the
virus is in retreat in India. The country is a distant second to the United
States in terms of coronavirus cases, with about 10.6 million. Daily
cases have dropped significantly since last fall.
India launched
its nationwide vaccination drive, one of the world’s largest, on Jan. 16.
The country is aiming to vaccinate 300 million people by the summer,
starting with 10 million health-care personnel. Regulators fast-tracked
the approval of two vaccines — the AstraZeneca vaccine and, more
controversially, a vaccine called Covaxin developed in India that does not yet
have efficacy data.
So far India is providing the
AstraZeneca vaccine to its neighbors. Some analysts questioned whether the
donations would have a lasting impact on existing sources of tension, such as a
boundary dispute with Nepal.
“You have neighbors who resent
India’s overweening ways as it is,” said Manoj Joshi, a foreign policy analyst
and senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “I don’t
think they’re going to be so terribly grateful that they forget all that.”
Conspicuously absent from the list
of countries receiving free vaccine doses is Pakistan, India’s rival and
neighbor to the west. The relationship between the two countries hit a nadir in
2019 when they engaged in
their first aerial dogfight in nearly 50 years following a terrorist
attack in Kashmir.
Pakistan recently approved the
AstraZeneca vaccine. It has not approached India about a potential shipment,
said two Indian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to discuss the matter. “We’ll cross that bridge when we
come to it,” one of the officials said.
A spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign
Ministry referred queries to the Health Ministry, which did not respond.
India is monitoring its vaccine
supply on a weekly basis to make sure it can meet both domestic needs and
demands from other countries, one of the Indian officials said. Commercial
exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine — including to Brazil and Morocco — will
begin within days.
Countries that received the free
vaccine doses this week expressed their
thanks. On Wednesday, an Indian military transport plane landed at the only
international airport in Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan nation wedged between India
and China. It carried 150,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, enough to
vaccinate more than one-tenth of the total population targeted for
immunization.
Lotay Tshering, Bhutan’s prime
minister, said
in a statement that the Bhutanese people were “immensely grateful” for
the doses. “It is of unimaginable value when precious commodities are shared
even before meeting your own needs.”
Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad,
Pakistan, contributed to this report.
Read more
Who
will make coronavirus vaccines for the developing world? India holds the key.
