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India’s vaccine strategy has flopped. A dismissive attitude towards the second Covid-19 outbreak that has raged uncontrolled, and a mistaken belief that indigenously made shots would be equal to the task of inoculating a billion adults, have left the nation scrambling. Efforts are under way to procure supplies from Pfizer Inc, Moderna Inc and Johnson & Johnson. But their order books are full.
There is a way out of the crunch, as long as authorities are realistic: acquiring vaccines from regional rival China. They don’t have the same efficacy as the leading-edge products and may not offer a ticket to herd immunity. Seychelles saw a dangerous jump in infections after making Sinopharm the mainstay of its inoculation drive. But then, herd immunity isn’t within India’s reach, not with only 3% of the population fully vaccinated. New Delhi can at least ensure that the next coronavirus wave doesn’t kill thousands of people a day for want of hospital beds or oxygen.
To achieve this aim, India must talk to China. And that’s easier said than done. New Delhi faces tough issues, from long-standing territorial disputes to a deep suspicion of Beijing’s Belt-and-Road strategy. Bilateral trade skews heavily in favor of China. Being inundated with cheap widgets frustrates India’s policy makers no end. Ever since violent clashes a year ago along their Himalayan border, pruning imports and investments from the People’s Republic has been an unstated goal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for self-sufficiency. Indian politicians of all hues will find it hard to suddenly advocate vaccines from Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Yet what can be a bigger national interest right now than saving Indians from avoidable death and durably reopening the economy?
Messenger RNA-based vaccines would be a better option if they were immediately available. The genetic codes, which stimulate an immune response by instructing the body to make proteins that mimic part of the virus, appear to offer 90% protection against symptomatic Covid-19, superior to the 50% to 80% range for Chinese shots developed from inactivated viruses. But the time to order mRNA doses — and set up the required ultra-low-temperature supply chain — was last year. Now, Pfizer and Moderna are flatly refusing to entertain requests from India’s ill-equipped states. Even if the federal government manages to persuade the manufacturers, or New Delhi reverses its decision to pass off vaccination of the under-45 population to subnational entities and the private sector, help may come too late to damp a third wave.
India hopes to get the required 2 billion vaccines by the end of this year through adding Russia’s Sputnik V to the mix and ramping up capacity at the two existing local producers, Serum Institute of India Ltd, which makes the AstraZeneca Plc shots, and Bharat Biotech Ltd, which has yet to publish efficacy data of its inactivated virus vaccine. A few other options have been included to make up the shortfall on planners’ spreadsheets. What happens in the real world, however, may only be a slight improvement over the current dribs and drabs of doses. Fewer than 2 million Indians are getting vaccinated every day, 40% less than in April when the inventory wasn’t as thin as now.
—Bloomberg