Play, pray and pay- That’s all you can do in this pandemic

There were national leaders who devalued science, denied Covid’s severity, delayed responses, and fostered distrust among citizens, says the report of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. The panel, co-chaired by Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, has been reviewing national responses of 28 countries.

Clark described February 2020, when India hosted the then US President Donald Trump, as “a month of lost opportunity to avert a pandemic, as so many countries chose to wait and see”.

But even a year later, the Indian Government inspires little confidence and shows little understanding. It refuses to admit that there is a shortage of vaccines due to its own policies. The Health Minister this week again claimed that vaccination in India had been the ‘fastest’ and declared that eight crore doses would be produced in May and nine Crore doses in June. India however needs 200 Crore doses for universal vaccination.

India has done what no country has done. It has allowed states to issue global tenders for vaccines; it wants the states to compete and spend their resources while dictating how many doses each state would get. It also has allowed what no country has allowed—the private sector to profiteer from vaccines and sell them at higher prices. It makes both economic and administrative sense for the Union Government to negotiate and purchase vaccines in bulk. Why isn’t it doing it?

It failed to provide any support to the seven public sector vaccine manufacturing units. And although ICMR helped with clinical trials and the National Institute of Virology separated the strain, the government allowed Bharat Biotech in the private sector to manufacture the vaccine; and although India has at least 20 potential vaccine manufacturers, only two are producing vaccines and at too slow a pace because they do not have the capacity.

The mysterious and inexplicable steps have been defended by the Government in the Supreme Court. Its affidavit essentially says it knows best. It has also taken the stand that compulsory licensing to allow other vaccine manufacturers to produce the indigenous Covaxin would not be in public interest, without quite explaining why.

The Prime Minister is wrong when he claims that private companies built India’s vaccine capacity. The Serum Institute of India may be the world’s largest vaccine producer but the backbone of the industry are the Haffkine Institute in Mumbai, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad and the National Institute of Virology at Pune besides several other CSIR labs.

Had the government the sense to involve the public sector manufacturers, there would not have been a vaccine shortage now. But then this is clearly not the most sensible government to have in such times.