Amid strong backlash over the shortage of vaccines in India, Niti Ayog’s VK Paul said that over two billion doses will be made in the country in five months (August to December) for India and for the people of India. Vaccine will be available for all as we move forward, he added.
As per the announcement, India will produce:
- 75 crore doses – Covishield
- 55 cores doses- Covaxin
- 30 crore doses- Biological E subunit vaccine
- 15.6 crore doses- Sputnik V
- 5 crore- Zydus Cadila 5
- 20 crore doses- Novavax (SII)
- 10 crore dose: Nasal vaccine (Bharat Biotech)
- 6 crore doses: Gennova
By achieving this, the Indian government aims to vaccinate all citizens by the end of 2021, but at the current rate, it will take India 2.4 years just to cover 75 percent of its population.
To achieve this unimaginable target, VK Paul said that India will manufacture 216 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccines between August and December. Currently, India’s SII and Bharat Biotech manufacture approximately 21.66 lakh and 19.4 lakh doses per day respectively.
Going by the government’s tall claims to produce 216 crore doses between August and December, India will have to exponentially ramp up their daily vaccine production to almost by 4.8 times of the manufacturing capacity in June, so as to produce 43.2 crore doses a month starting from August.
In April, the expert panel of the country’s drug regulator gave emergency approval of Russia’s Sputnik V covid-19 vaccine. Reacting to the same, Dr Paul said,”Sputnik vaccine has arrived in India. I am happy to say that we are hopeful that it will be available in the market next week. We are hopeful that the sale of the limited supply that has come from Russia will begin next week.”
The government also said that it is proactively engaging with foreign vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
However, it is important to note that India had become the fastest country in the world to administer 17 crore doses, whereas China took 119 days and the United States took 115 days to reach the landmark.
India has administered much more vaccines than most superpowers in the world, a brief of which is mentioned in the following table:
Country | Doses Administered |
India | 173,862,643 |
United States | 263,132,561 |
United Kingdom | 51,225,890 |
Brazil | 48,193,472 |
Germany | 34,408,840 |
France | 23,949,989 |
Russia | 21,844,382 |
Canada | 16,557,932 |
United Arab Emirates | 11,273,344 |
Japan | 4,994,028 |
The data clearly indicates that inspite of the slow rate of vaccinations in India, it still has a lead over most powerhouses. The same was reiterated by Matthew Hayden recently, when he said that India has vaccinated almost 5 times more citizens than in Australia and that the world media has been too quick to judge it.
Therefore, India's vaccination rate really needs to be pressed up if the country wants to get ahead of the curve by the end of this year. One Indian vaccinated, is a thousand lives saved.