Moderna Inc, one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers whose jabs are being administered in North America and Europe, has declined the Punjab government’s request for a direct supply of doses.
The company, as per its policy, would “only deal with Government of India”, said Punjab’s nodal officer for vaccination, on May 23.
The Punjab government has recently reached out to all top vaccine makers, including Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson and the producers of Russia’s Sputnik V for the direct supply of doses to the state.
Moderna has refused to send direct vaccination to the Punjab government as according to their policy, they only deal with the Government of India and not with any state government or private parties. Even Pfizer will only deal with the centre.
This development is going to create many problems, this may also encourage other vaccine manufacturers to refuse the direct supply to the states. In the case of Mumbai, their local Municipal Corporation has floated Expression of Interest document worldwide, and for them also the response is not encouraging. This might happen to other states also. In my opinion, all the states should give their requirement to the Centre with the expected delivery schedule, and the Centre should arrange for all the states. Regarding amount required to make the payment, should be adjusted against the share of States from GST.
Now coming to the availability of vaccine in India- Serum Institute (SII) is manufacturing around 6 Cr doses per month and Bharat Biotech (BB) is manufacturing 2 Cr doses per month. So average comes to 26.7 lakh doses per day. But the indication is that 5 Cr doses will be given to govt and the balance may land in Pvt sector. The average supply of last week has been under 13 lakhs per day, which is a little less than half of the daily average being manufactured by both the manufacturers. It looks like there is something wrong with vaccine management. The rift between the Centre and states have led to this situation, first state wanted that they should manage their own vaccine, but after few states tried to procure the vaccine from local and foreign manufacturers there is a lapse of time, and now whatever Centre had ordered for the month of May is being delivered but that quantity is not at all sufficient for the country, as states went into their procedures to procure the vaccine doses, and this time was lost.
Moderna and Pfizer have informed that they will now deal with the only Centre, plus Moderna says that they do not have extra supply till the year-end. Pfizer is stuck around the indemnity clause that the company wants to be exempted, the talks are progressing well and the issues of supply is being sorted out.
Let us now come to facts- On 1st April 2021, India had an opening stock of about 1.5 Cr doses, which had piled up through February and March owing to modest rates of vaccination for various factors including low infection rates. The demand soared in April due to the second wave of Covid 19. By 1st May, however, all stocks including the reserves had been exhausted. So vaccination began in May with zero balance. As the vaccines are manufactured in batches, the availability can not be spread out evenly across all days of the month. So when a batch rolls out, the availability automatically increases. The whole system follows a complex production/distribution cycle, which also includes testing of samples from each batch.
The govt’s big bet on the vaccine is on Covaxin touching a production level of 7 to 7.5 Cr doses per month, as BB is scaling up its current production capacity by 10 times. The fact is that there is a global vaccine shortage. So, imports are difficult. Countries that have pre-ordered are still struggling to get the stocks. This means that India’s vaccine programme will for a large part and good measure be dependant on Covidshield and Covaxin. And if that is the case an atmosphere of political support may serve the cause better.
For the people who are accusing the Govt of exporting the vaccine, they should know govt exported the vaccine to 95 countries from 21st January to 5th March. The total figure stands like this 107.5 Lakh doses of Covidshield as a grant, 357.92 lakh doses of commercial Covidshield and 198.628 lakh doses of commercial Covaxin. This means total of 663.698 lakh doses were exported. This only means that if govt had not exported then on 1st April we might have a balance of additional say 6.64 lakh doses. But there were very low number of cases in February and March, because the 2nd wave hit badly by middle of April. Now if certain political parties had not put the doubts in the people’s mind by saying that these are BJP vaccines and they are not proven their efficacy, these statements led to the very low rate of vaccination. Now if the 2nd wave would not have come in India then we would not be complaining of vaccine shortage. Secondly, if irresponsible statements were not issued by the politicians, so many more people would have been vaccinated.
In my opinion, these ifs and buts are not going to serve any purpose now, because that has become past. Now we have to face reality, and the reality is that vaccination programme all over the world including India has suffered and at this stage, we should have patience and support the state and Central govt because everyone is trying their best to come out of this issue.
Waiting for your views and comments.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
24th May 2021
R. N. Mungale.
I agree. Hi
Tejinder Singh
Very true