Covid-19 vaccination programmes across Africa and much ofthe developing world will suffer big delays after India, the world’s biggestvaccine producer, said that it would not be exporting the Oxford/AstraZenecavaccine until the end of the year, The Guardian reported.
The decision is likely to leave the Covax globalvaccine-sharing facility, which helps the poor countries, facing a shortfall ofhundreds of millions of doses, the report said.
"We continue to scale up manufacturing andprioritise India … We also hope to start delivering to Covax and othercountries by the end of this year," Adar Poonawalla, the chief executiveof Serum Institute of India (SII), said on Tuesday.
SII had paused deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine inMarch, diverting for domestic use doses that were to be distributed across thedeveloping world. It had been widely hoped that supplies of the AstraZenecashot, which is suitable for use in countries with weak infrastructure and manypoorer countries, would begin again in June or October, the report said.
However, India is battling a wave of infections that haskilled more than 283,000 people, according to official figures that manyexperts believe are substantial underestimates, the report said.
The World Health Organization (WHO), a co-leader ofCovax, has called on vaccine makers outside India to advance supplies to theprogramme to make up the shortfall.
Covax aims to provide vaccines to the developing world in2021, a target that was always optimistic and now looks impossible to achieve,as per The Guardian.
The delays will hit India's neighbours hard. Nepal andBangladesh are making frantic diplomatic efforts to secure vaccines to prop uptheir faltering inoculation drives as their stocks run out.
Bangladesh said it urgently needed 1.6 million shots ofthe AstraZeneca vaccine to provide second doses.
Nepal, which started its vaccination drive in Januarywith 2.35 million AstraZeneca doses provided by India and Covax, also said ithad no stocks and more than 1.55 million people were awaiting second doses.
"People above 65 and others in risk groups whoreceived their first shots of the Indian vaccine are waiting for theirsecond," said Jhalak Gautam, the head of the vaccine section of theministry of health and population in Nepal, as per the report.
"It's already overdue," he said, adding thatSII was yet to deliver 1 million shots that Nepal bought, it said.
Covax has a deal with SII to deliver 1.1bn doses ofeither the AstraZeneca vaccine or the newer Novavax shot, which has still toobtain regulatory approval.
The delays raise the prospect of billions of peoplearound the world waiting until 2022 or even 2023 for vaccination, which mayallow new and potentially more harmful variants of the virus to emerge, thereport said.
Nearly one in three recorded deaths from Covid worldwideare occurring in poor and lower-middle income countries, statistics fromearlier this month revealed, up from 9.3 per cent of global deaths earlier thisyear.
US President Joe Biden said on Monday that the US wouldexport at least 20 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson& Johnson shots, on top of 60 million AstraZeneca doses he had alreadyplanned to give to other countries.
The US President's announcement came as the WHO DirectorGeneral, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned the world had reached a situationof "vaccine apartheid".
The WHO said last month that Africa had given fewer than2 per cent of vaccines administered globally and was being left behind. Therehave been 4.7 million infections and 1.26 lakh deaths from Covid in Africa,according to official figures, though experts believe these do not reflect thetrue total, The Guardian reported.