Will India’s Covishield export halt amid coronavirus surge hurt its vaccine diplomacy?
- Officials have defended the decision to ‘calibrate’ Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine exports made by the Serum Institute of India as the country experiences a second wave
- But while production is being ramped up, the temporary halt in deliveries could affect Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s soft power efforts
“We have supplied more vaccines globally than have vaccinated our own people,” said India’s representative at the UN General Assembly last Friday. Since January 20, India has sent over 60 million vaccine doses to 71 countries, and only achieved the same number of domestic vaccinations on Sunday.
The remarks were in response to grumbling in some world capitals that the SII was not delivering on its contracts. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson even sent his personal envoy, Lord Eddie Lister, to New Delhi last week to seek reassurances about the UK’s AstraZeneca doses.
Until the past fortnight, India’s balancing act was working well. Its coronavirus cases were at the lowest number in months and it was vaccinating frontline workers and the elderly. With some 60 million doses rolling off the SII’s assembly line every month, bringing the total to 200 million, there was enough supply for domestic needs and for exports under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’. Under this policy, India began sending vaccines first to its neighbours and then to other countries, in some cases as donations and in others as commercial sales.