Covid-19: India no longer exports the vaccines it produces to favor its population
Photo of a Covid-19 vaccination center in Mumbai, India on April 8, 2021. AP - Rafiq Maqbool
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2 min
India is experiencing a second very violent wave of Covid-19 contamination these days.
The country recorded more than 125,000 cases on Friday, April 9, its absolute record since the start of the pandemic.
To deal with it, the authorities have accelerated the vaccination of the population.
But this has a consequence: the country can no longer export the necessary vaccines to dozens of other countries.
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With our correspondent in New Delhi,
Sébastien Farcis
India is accelerating its vaccination campaign to try to absorb the outbreak of Covid-19 contamination.
Four million people receive a daily dose of one of the two vaccines produced in the country: that of
Oxford / AstraZeneca
or that of the Indian laboratory Bharat Biotech, named
Covacin
.
Suddenly, India, which is the second largest producer of anti-Covid vaccines in the world, stops almost all exports.
So far, 64 million doses have been sent, mainly to Africa, South Asia and Brazil.
A quarter of them have also
gone
to the poorest countries, through the
Covax program
.
This sharp reduction worries the United Nations, because India is a pillar of this mechanism.
Resumption of exports hoped for in June
Easwaram Subramanian, head of supply chains at Deloitte, speaks of a medium-term recovery: “
Expansions underway in factories and there are stocks available.
Considering the pace of vaccinations, I think that exports will be able to resume in June.
"
Pressure is mounting, however, on the producer of the AstraZeneca vaccine: this laboratory has reminded the company of its legal obligation to export part of the vaccines it produces to India.
With more than 167,000 dead since the start of the pandemic, India is the fourth most bereaved country in the world.
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