By Sanjeev Miglani
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India will begin exporting COVID-19 vaccines from Wednesday, paving the way for many low- and middle-income countries to obtain supplies of easy-to-store Oxford / AstraZeneca, with which it has announced plans to send millions of doses in a few days.
The Sorum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine producer, told Reuters last week that it expects a World Health Organization (WHO) emergency use authorization for that vaccine, which the SII has been licensed to make.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that shipments will begin on Wednesday after requests from “neighboring countries and important partners”. Officials said the first doses would go to Bhutan and the Maldives.
Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Seychelles will also receive supplies in the first phase of this week, the ministry said.
Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it expected to receive a gift of two million doses on Thursday. The country of 160 million people, which has not yet started its vaccination program, has ordered an additional 30 million doses, officials said.
The vast majority of production for the three most widely approved COVID vaccines globally so far has been absorbed by developed nations, raising concerns at WHO and elsewhere that the poorest countries could face a long wait for supplies.
The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is widely seen as your best option because the other two, manufactured by Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, need to be stored at very low temperatures.
The WHO emergency authorization for the Astra-Oxford vaccine would additionally allow the SII to start providing it for the WHO-supported COVAX initiative with the aim of fairly distributing COVID-19 vaccines worldwide.
India, which has the second highest number of COVID cases in the world, said it needs to balance its domestic needs with international demands.
On Saturday, she began administering Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccines, as well as one developed by Bharat Biotech, for home healthcare professionals.
The country plans to start exporting the Bharat Biotech vaccine at a later stage.
The Foreign Ministry said that the supply of the Astra-Oxford vaccine to Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Mauritius would begin shortly after regulators in those countries released the drug.
Pakistan is alone among India’s neighbors, where it has no plans to send doses of vaccines, and a government source in New Delhi said that no requests came from there.
(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, additional reporting by Ruma Paul in Dhaka; Editing by Euan Rocha, Alexander Smith and John Stonestreet)