NEW DELHI – India has approved the Covid-19 vaccine from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca PLC, making use of a vaccination worldwide that is expected to be embraced by developing countries given the lower price and ease of transportation compared to others runners.
Indian information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar said on Saturday that the vaccine, which was developed in the UK, has been approved for emergency use.
“Last year started with corona. This year has started with a vaccine, ”he said at a newsletter in New Delhi on Saturday.
The UK approved the vaccine earlier this week and India is one of the first countries to follow suit.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine could be suitable for India and other developing countries due to its price, convenience and expected global reach. AstraZeneca has pledged to make as many as three billion doses available by 2021 – more than any other Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer – and at a lower price.
A fake waiting area was set up during a test drive at a vaccination center in New Delhi on Jan. 2.
Photo:
rajat gupta / Shutterstock
The British company says it will not benefit from the shot during the pandemic, or ever in the case of poorer countries.
The vaccine can be transported and stored for months with normal refrigeration, making it easier to distribute in places where people and care networks are overloaded and underfunded. Many of the other leading Western vaccines require ultra-cold temperatures for nearly a few days or weeks.
India is already in the process of building a vaccine delivery network and ran a test run in some states this weekend to test it. The first wave of vaccination will hitch a ride on the nationwide child vaccination network, which is one of the largest in the world. That network spans the entire South Asian country, but does not have direct access to the freezers or transportation equipment needed to handle the vaccines that require extremely cold temperatures.
In India, AstraZeneca has a manufacturing and distribution agreement with the Serum Institute of India to provide more than one billion doses to developing countries. The institute is already the world’s largest vaccine producer by volume, receiving more than a billion doses per year for everything from polio to measles, mainly for exports to emerging markets.
Convinced that the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine would receive approval, SII created and stocked it and has nearly 50 million doses ready. It did not say how much of that would be for India, but in the past it said it expected that about half of production would ultimately be for domestic use.
While India’s early approval and the Serum Institute’s stock will speed up the process, a nationwide rollout will still take time. Richer, less populated countries are already struggling with logistics. India plans to deliver more than 300 million doses in the next six months to make a dent in the population of more than 1.3 billion people.
The vaccine lasts twice and UK health officials recommend a delay of up to three months between each dose. Similar guidelines apply to the vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc.
and BioNTech SE which the UK had previously approved in December. The Pfizer BioNTech recording and one developed by Moderna Inc.
are also approved in the US.
India is in need of an affordable, easy-to-distribute vaccine as more than 10 million Indians have been confirmed to be infected, the second after the US. Although the daily infection rate has declined in recent months, it is still around 20,000 new infections and more than 200 deaths per day.
Meanwhile, India’s gross domestic product shrank by more than 15% in the six months to September from a year earlier. The government wants a vaccine to end coronavirus fears and allow the economy to recover to create more and better jobs for the young population.
Write to Vibhuti Agarwal at [email protected] and Eric Bellman at [email protected]
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