Infections are topping 50,000 per day, more than double the number less than two weeks ago. And the Indian vaccine drive has been sluggish, with less than 4 percent of India's nearly 1.4 billion people getting a jab
The government of India is holding back nearly all of the 2.4 million doses made each day by the Serum Institute of India, a private company that is one of the world’s largest producers of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
India is desperate for all the doses it can get. Infections are topping 50,000 per day, more than double the number less than two weeks ago. And the Indian vaccine drive has been sluggish, with less than 4% of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people getting a jab, far behind the rates of the United States, Britain and most European countries.
A few weeks ago, India was a major exporter of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and it was using that to exert influence in South Asia and around the world. More than 70 countries, from Djibouti to Britain, received a total of more than 60 million doses of vaccines made in India. From mid-January into March, major vaccine shipments left India just a few days apart.
But the size of the shipments has greatly diminished in the past two weeks, according to data from India’s foreign ministry. And Covax, the program set up by donor agencies to purchase vaccines for poorer nations, said Thursday that it had told those countries that nearly 100 million doses expected in March and April would be delayed because of “increased demand for COVID-19 vaccines in India.”
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