India builds up Covid vaccine stocks to lift shipments globally

Covishield makes up the bulk of 250 million doses, while the rest are Covaxin, NITI Aayog member V K Paul said

By Sudhi Ranjan Sen,

India is building up a stockpile of Covid vaccine doses with 250 million shots prepared and three more vaccines under development, a government official said on Wednesday, which will go some way to help the country meet its export commitments.

Most of these doses will be given to neighbouring countries and will also meet India’s commitments to the World Health Organisation’s Covax initiative for poorer nations, said V K Paul, a member of NITI Aayog.

Covishield makes up the bulk of 250 million doses, while the rest are Covaxin, Paul said. Several more vaccines are under development and are likely to get statutory clearances by the end of the year, he said.

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“India will play a significant role in providing vaccines to the world by 2022,” he told reporters.

The news comes as India is set to achieve its own milestone of one billion first vaccination doses next week, a government official told reporters earlier. About a fifth of the 1.49 billion population is fully inoculated, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.

India last month said it would restart vaccine shipments in October, some six months after the government halted exports due to the second wave of infections. Local media reported that exports have already begun to Myanmar, Nepal, and Bangladesh, which received one million doses each.

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Iran had also obtained one million doses of Covaxin, the Indian Embassy in Tehran tweeted last week, signalling that Modi’s vaccine diplomacy is in full swing.

India to restart vaccine exports as neighbours put pressure

India agreed in September to restart exports just before Modi embarked on a visit to the US, which included a face-to-face meeting with the Quad group that is also made up of Australia, the US, and Japan. Modi told his counterparts that eight million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine would available by the end of October under the partnership.

The Quad countries will pay for the vaccine and India would bear a certain part of the cost, Modi said during that meeting in Washington.

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