Governments have ceded their rights and responsibilities when it comes to vaccinating their citizens against Covid-19, well-known economist Dr Sanjay G Reddy said on Wednesday.
Delivering a talk on ‘the people’s vaccine,’ he attributed the continued distress across the world to “systemic failure on a grand scale.”
Even countries with domestic capabilities had lost the opportunity to rope in analytical chemists from the food and pharma industries to step up production, said Reddy, a PhD from Harvard University who teaches economics at New School for Social Research, New York.
India failed miserably on the arithmetic front, and did not correctly count the number of doses it would require to counter the pandemic, he said in response to a question from Metrolife.
The government can still make amends by releasing a people’s vaccine, or a vaccine that is easily available, and administered free or at a low price, he told an online audience of mostly academics.
He called for an end to ‘private sector anarchy’ in India, and urged the government to collaborate with the country’s numerous production facilities to produce a people’s vaccine. “This will bring pressure on other companies to lower their prices,” Reddy said.
India may yet get by without further damage if it conducts enough sero surveys to gauge immunity and vulnerability, he said.
The session was hosted by the Indian Institute of Social and Economic Change, and moderated by Chandan Gowda, its Ramakrishna Hegde chair professor.
(Published 03 June 2021, 16:21 IST)
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