Going by media reports, India has triumphed in South Asia against its rival China in vaccine diplomacy. At least four South Asian neighbours – Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives have gladly accepted India’s generous gift of 3.2 million doses of Covid 19 vaccine produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) under the licence of Oxford-AstraZeneca. As the world is striving for finding a way out of the pandemic, India found its vaccine producing capacity very useful for diplomatic revival in the neighbourhood.
On the other hand, such enthusiasm was markedly absent in relation to the
Chinese vaccines. Among those four
nations, China had offered Bangladesh and Nepal some of its varieties as gift.
It has also offered similar goodwill gestures to few other countries in Asia
and Africa. Pakistan has already accepted the Chinese offer of half a million
doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine. China has made a concerted push to sell its
vaccines to countries around the globe for months but only recently announced
donations to Myanmar, Cambodia and Philippines. According to Chinese media
reports, it has signed deals with 20 countries, many of which are in Southeast
Asia, to offer its home-developed vaccines.
India started shipping those Maitri (friendship)
vaccines just after four days of launching vaccination of its own population.
But, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made the calculation
that it has enough vaccines to share and hence it launched this diplomatic
initiative ahead of any other in the world. It now plans to donate millions
more to Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. A former Indian ambassador described it to
Reuters as “a well-crafted, calibrated series of actions you are seeing, they
confirm the validity of our ‘neighbourhood first’ policy.”
India launched its national vaccination campaign,
the largest in the world, on January 16. On the day, it had managed to give
shots to less than 170,000 people, mainly health workers. But, the health ministry
then said that it was aiming to inoculate 100 people in each of the 3,006
vaccination centers across the country, which roughly stands at about 300,000 a
day or nine million a month. According to NDTV, Serum Institute had stockpiled about
80 million doses by the end of last year. Clearly, this stock was much more
than the capacity India had for pushing into the arms of its people. But, on
January 4 the SII said
that it has secured India’s regulatory approval on the condition that it will
not export the shots until the country’s vulnerable populations are protected. The export ban however was lifted on January23,
three days after India delivered it goodwill vaccines to its closest
neighbours.
The ban effectively stalled some of the export commitments
for which Serum Institute has already taken advance payment. Among the affected,
the most notable is Brazil, which at the last hour had to cancel its special
flight for taking the cargo. Bangladesh too did not receive the promised shipment
that it bought through Serum’s agent Beximco Pharmaceuticals despite repeated
assurances that the ban would not affect this deal. The deal stipulates that
from January, Bangladesh will get 5 million doses a month and the whole 30
million will be delivered by August. Amidst confusion and uncertainties over
Beximco deal, Bangladeshi officials said that they were expecting 1.5 million
of the vaccine doses bought together with the Indian gift. But, at the end, it
only got the gift consignment which is less than 40 percent of what Serum
should have delivered under seller’s obligation.
Serum Institute also had a strategic partnership with
Global vaccine alliance GAVI which had invested $300 million in strengthening its
production capacity and to secure hundreds of millions of doses of its Covid 19
vaccines for low and middle income countries which would be managed by COVAX
supported by the World Health Organisation. It seems quite unusual that the
COVAX was not in the priority list as it has not yet received any supply,
while, India was able to use it as a tool to advance its diplomatic agenda
against China. The chronology of the events centering AstraZeneca vaccines
clearly shows Modi government’s political intervention in the supply process by
stalling normal exports and diverting some of those to re-label as donations.
Had India allowed Serum to fulfil its export commitments and added the government
gift with them, then the glory would have been something extraordinary.
Both India and China have joined the vaccine race
from the very beginning and were keen to run trials in Bangladesh. At the onset
of the Chinese vaccine development, Bangladesh did agree to allow its trial,
but withdrew later owed to alleged dispute over cost sharing. But, the latest
official statements suggest Bangladesh will now allow both China and India to run
trials of their respective vaccines on its population. These developments too
suggest China somehow lost out to India.
(Published on January 24, 2020 on en.prothomalo.com)
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