Mihir Sharma,
A few weeks ago, Indian government officials slapped each other on the back. India was the “pharmacy of the world,” they said, and its cheaply produced vaccines would help end the global Covid-19 pandemic. The federal health minister said the country had entered “the end” of its own battle against the pandemic. Even the Reserve Bank of India announced in unusually enthusiastic tones that India had “bowed (the Covid-19 curve) like Beckham” and that “soon the winter of our discontent will become a glorious summer ”.
These braggarts seem foolish, at best, today. Covid-19 case numbers and deaths have begun to rise exponentially in India, easily surpassing the figures recorded during last fall’s peak. Hospital beds fall short and so do vaccine doses. Although the government has stopped all vaccine exports, many states have only a few days’ supply left in stock.
What went wrong? As is typical in India, official arrogance, hypernationalism, populism and a wide dose of bureaucratic incompetence have combined to create a crisis. The state has left India vulnerable to a second wave of Covid-19, multiple new mutations and the threat of repeated blockades destroying livelihoods.
Read: India’s second wave of coronavirus poses a negative threat to credit: Moody’s
Worse, Indians are not the only ones who will pay the price. Developing nations that had relied on the “pharmacy of the world” will now have to wait longer to get their blows, even as new variants continue to spread.
Let’s start with arrogance. It seems that the government has unintentionally believed its own rhetoric about curving the infection curve after imposing the strictest closure in the world last year. Even as new and virulent strains of the virus began to emerge, some of them from India’s own hinterland, officials showed no greater urgency when deploying vaccines. Regulators approved the first Indian vaccines in December. The first shot was not fired until more than two weeks later.
Then there is nationalism. Indian bureaucrats and regulators, under any administration, are prone to barely disguised xenophobia. Therefore, regulators expelled a locally developed vaccine, Covaxin from Bharat Biotech Ltd., even before phase III trial data became available. Meanwhile, other vaccines that had received regulatory approval elsewhere, including those from Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson, were unnecessarily suspended until trials could be conducted in India.
World Health Organization guidelines say such “bridge trials” may be needed if there are compelling scientific reasons to expect that the immune response to the vaccine, and therefore its effectiveness, may be significantly different. of that documented in a previous efficacy trial “. The Indian authorities never bothered to share these compelling scientific reasons. Why would the J&J vaccine, proven to be effective even against virulent South African and Brazilian variants, need another large-scale trial in India? (The company is still waiting for permission to start a connection process.)
Read also: India is rapidly monitoring emergency approvals for foreign-produced Covid-19 vaccines
As for populism, the government tried to squeeze the private sector through price controls. Vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India banned production for India’s private market, although CEO Adar Poonawalla had repeatedly said he would continue to offer the government doses of AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccine. only for Rs. 150 ($ 2) each. This price “is not profitable enough to reinvest substantially in capacity building,” said Poonawalla, who hoped to sell other doses in the open market of Rs. 1,000 ($ 13) each. Now the company has also lost its export orders, further limiting cash flow.
As a result, Serum Institute has received legal notice from AstraZeneca for breaching its contracts. More importantly, the company has no money to increase its manufacturing capabilities. It makes 50-70 million shots a month; it needs to be doubled at least. Poonawalla has asked the government for $ 400 million to increase capacity.
However, far from investing in capacity or negotiating business to take advantage of unused vaccine manufacturing facilities, as the Biden administration has done in the US, the Indian government has been slow to even sign contracts. purchase with manufacturers. By January, the Serum Institute had stored about 50 million doses; the government did not sign any purchase orders for weeks and only initially bought 11 million jabs.
The government seems to expect Indian manufacturers to produce specific vaccines, jump through various regulatory hoops and then break the rest of the wage contracts to give the final product only to the Indian state, at very insufficient prices. Isn’t it weird that Pfizer’s local subsidiary quietly withdrew its application for emergency use of its vaccine in India?
All employers in India are aware of this kind of regulatory uncertainty, school bullying, lack of foresight and urgency and contempt for legitimate benefits. These attitudes are at the root of the country’s growth and investment crisis. Now the rest of the world will have to suffer the consequences.