In times of vaccine nationalism, India played key role in inoculating world

Opposition parties led by the biggest leaders of the Congress have of late resorted to vaccine nationalism; calling for Indians to be vaccinated before the rest of the world. As the global Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic charts its own course, a look at data shows that India played a key role in sending vaccines to the world. This at a time when developed nations like the US, UK and others in the European Union were strictly against exporting vaccines to other countries.

India till date has exported 65 million doses of vaccines to over 88 countries. At the moment 450 million people across the world have got at least one shot of the Covid vaccine. Most of them are in developed nations. India started its vaccination drive on January 16, 2021 while it started exporting vaccines from January 20. Until as late as March, India was dispatching more vaccines to the world than it was administering domestically. The following chart shows how the world’s largest vaccine manufacturing country was ramping up global supplies even as its own vaccination drive got off to a slow start with only a selected group of frontline workers being inoculated.

India’s global vaccine outreach has been facilitated by COVAX, which has shipped made in India vaccines to poorer regions in Sub Saharan Africa in addition to remote Pacific islands. India started off its vaccine dispatches by prioritising nations in its immediate neighbourhood like Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Pakistan was one of the nations that got Indian made vaccines through the UN led COVAX initiative. Under commercial agreements, five million doses of Astra Zeneca vaccines (named Covishield in India) and manufactured by Pune based Serum Institute of India (SII) were also exported to the UK. The following gives an idea of how India’s vaccine diplomacy has reached every corner of the world.
As vaccinations were opened up to more people in the country, domestic vaccinations rose exponentially from the middle of March. This is when there was a sharp downturn in India’s vaccine dispatches and exports to the world. One of the reasons for the inability to keep up global supplies with domestic needs was constrained vaccine production capacity. With only two manufacturers and global and domestic demand increasing simultaneously, India seemed to have been caught in a spot. With Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine approved, this situation could ameliorate in the coming days.
India’s role in ramping up global supplies can be better understood by the following chart. In the weeks preceding reports of vaccine shortages in India, the country accounted for almost a third of weekly vaccinations across the world. For instance between February 20 and March 6, India dispatched almost 20 million doses across the world. During this period 50 million doses were administered globally. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that all these doses were Indian made, it shows the sheer scale of vaccine transportation from India.