Coronavirus vaccine update: 3 reasons India can help the world get a COVID-19 vaccine quickly

As the global coronavirus cases top the 25 million mark, the race to develop a vaccine to battle the highly infectious contagion has also intensified. As we write this, there are more than 35 vaccine candidates in different stages of clinical trials and at least 88 potential vaccines are in preclinical phases. In the light of wealthy countries signing billions of dollars of deals to procure millions of doses of promising vaccines, it is the immense manufacturing capability of India which may help in overcoming this approach of vaccine nationalism. It should be noted that the US and the UK have already signed advanced purchase agreements with drugmakers to secure doses of the promising vaccines that are being developed.

As governments race to reserve doses of most promising vaccines across the globe, the World Health Organization has maintained that this ‘nation first’ approach of signing bilateral agreements for COVID-19 doses is going to slow down the world’s recovery against the highly infectious disease. This approach of ‘hoarding vaccines’ by the richest countries in the world is certainly going to hinder the plan of equitable distribution of vaccines across the world by global health agencies.

As the World Health Organization has ‘warned’ that vaccine nationalism will not help us fight the virus, the world has pinned its hopes on India’s massive manufacturing abilities to help the world “recover together” in this battle against the pandemic. According to the director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “When we say it (equitable distribution of vaccine) should be a public good, it’s not sharing for the sake of sharing, it’s only because it has advantages. For the world to recover faster it has to recover together because it’s a globalised world.” Hence, being the third-largest supplier of medicines and vaccines to the world (especially to the global south), India can help by scaling up its manufacturing efforts of the potential vaccine candidates.

Oxford’s COVID vaccine, which is being touted as the frontrunner in the race of developing a promising vaccine for Coronavirus is already being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. For the unversed, SII Pune is the largest manufacturer of vaccines by volume in the world. The vaccine maker has already struck up a deal with the UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca to manufacture 1 billion doses of Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine. Pune’s SII has also signed a deal with American drugmaker Novavax to manufacture its potential vaccine candidate.

India’s Serum Institute of India has also made a landmark collaboration with the GAVI (Global Vaccine Alliance) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to manufacture and distribute up to 100 million doses of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines for low and middle-income countries of the world by the first half of 2021. The vaccines will be made available for up to 92 countries as per Gavi’s COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC).

Dr Seth Berkley, who is the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, lauded SII’s approach and asked other nations to follow India’s lead. He said, “With COVID-19 vaccines we want things to be different. If only the wealthiest countries in the world are protected, then international trade, commerce and society as a whole will continue to be hit hard as the pandemic continues to rage across the globe. "

"This new collaboration is an important step in our efforts to prevent this from happening, helping to ensure we have the additional manufacturing capacity to begin producing doses for every country, not just the wealthy few. We now need other vaccine manufacturers to step up and follow SII’s lead," he noted.