Focus on vaccine supply

Pace has increased but supply constraints remain

The United States administration has announced that all Americans who have received a two-shot vaccine will be eligible for a free booster shot eight months after their previous injection. The administration claims that vaccines become less effective over time — although the evidence it relies on reveals that there are no major increases in death from Covid-19 for those vaccinated with two doses. The US decision flies in the face of recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) that rich countries should not start recommending additional shots of the vaccine immediately in order to ensure that vaccine supply reaches developing nations. The WHO has called the decision “immoral” and “unconscionable”. Certainly, it will restart an argument about how richer countries, and the Joe Biden administration in the US, in particular, have shown a lack of responsibility in maintaining the flow of vaccines across the world and a cavalier approach to the continuing spread of the pandemic in less thoroughly vaccinated countries.

That the Biden administration has thrown a further spanner in the works when it comes to vaccine supply should be a reminder to the Indian government that it is not working hard enough to increase the availability of vaccines. There have been some successes in India’s vaccine drive over the past weeks. For example, rural India — earlier a stronghold of vaccine hesitancy — is now receiving the majority of vaccines being delivered. J P Nadda, the former Union health minister who is now president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has said that India’s vaccine supply will be in excess of 266 million doses in August and be up to 285 million by December. These numbers are surprising, as it is almost 100 million doses higher than the estimate earlier provided by the government, which has missed its target of a supply of 516 million doses by the end of last month. Certainly, the pace of vaccination has also increased. In the past weeks, aside from holidays and weekends, there is only one day on which less than 4.5 million shots have been administered in India. This pace, however, will need to almost double if the target of vaccinating every adult by the end of the year is to be met.

The central problem of vaccine supply remains the overdependence on a limited number of Indian producers. The whole idea of “aatmanirbharta” in vaccines must be revisited. Recently, a senior official of the NITI Aayog told The Wall Street Journal that both mRNA vaccines and the Johnson & Johnson shot would soon be in India — the latter through domestic production, and that “our intent is to have these three foreign vaccines in India as it reflects our faith in the international system and collaboration”. If so, this is a welcome shift. Too much time has already been wasted haggling over standard indemnification clauses. The government should also clarify whether supply chain issues dogging the Novavax vaccine, which was supposed to be produced in the hundreds of millions already in India, have been solved. Certainly, it is unconscionable that there is spare manufacturing capacity available in India, which is not being used because of licensing or legal issues. This red tape should have been cut through long ago. India needs to increase vaccine supply not just to meet its own targets but also because it can resume exports.