A quarter of total vaccine exports happened since Nov: Govt data

India will soon cross 100 million vaccine exports. Bangladesh and Indonesia purchased the maximum number of doses since November, shows MEA data

India was one of the few countries to have exported doses to over 88 countries back in April, when the world over countries were hoarding vaccines. While India stopped vaccine exports as the second wave of Covid-19 gripped the country, it restarted vaccine exports in November.

In fact, over a quarter of total doses exported by India have come since November. While the country had exported 70.4 million doses till November, data from the ministry of external affairs shows that it has since then exported 24.2 million doses.

While two-thirds of the supply has gone towards commercial considerations, one-third has been supplied to the COVAX alliance.

Nepal and Bangladesh have been the biggest beneficiaries, having cornered 5.8 million of the 7.2 million doses given by India to COVAX since November.

Bangladesh, data indicates, along with Indonesia, also received over 80 per cent of the doses given for commercial considerations.

While India had given 11.7 million doses as grant till October this year, Iran has been the only country to receive a grant of 1 million doses in October.

Meanwhile, first dose vaccinations in India have slowed down. Although the country was expected to vaccinate most of the adult population with one dose by the end of December, it has only been able to cover 826 million people, against a target of 940 million. The fully vaccinated population stands at 548 million.

World over only 56 per cent of the people have been vaccinated once. In Africa, where vaccine availability is still an issue, only 13 per cent of the people have been partially vaccinated.

As the world grapples with a new coronavirus variant, there is a need to increase the vaccination in under-served regions.

Data from Our World in Data shows that while 70 per cent of people were fully vaccinated in upper middle income and high-income countries, lower middle-income countries had only fully vaccinated only 32 per cent of their total population. The coverage in low-income countries was a paltry 3.7 per cent.