India's Covaxin vaccine not finding international buyers

New Delhi, Feb 12: Even as India makes its mark in the world with its vaccine diplomacy amid the Covid crisis, there are few international takers for its homemade vaccine Covaxin.

Covaxin is yet to complete its phase III trials is evidently a sore point. Bharat Biotech had started phase III trials for Covaxin in November 2020, enrolling 25,800 volunteers across India.

India's first indigenous vaccine against Covid-19 was to be sent pro bono to Myanmar, Mongolia, Oman, Bahrain, the Philipines, Maldives and Mauritius as a goodwill gesture.
The decision was taken at a high-level meeting on January 18, at the health ministry between the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar and MoS Pharmaceuticals Mansukh Mandaviya.

Before that, manufacturer Bharat Biotech International Limited was informed through an office memorandum dated January 15 that 8.1 lakh doses of Covaxin would be procured by the Minister of External affairs directly from them. The memorandum said that the procurement would start by January 22.

The developers of the vaccine have accepted that generating the data with regard to efficacy can take time and it is a process that needs to be respected.

Of the 64.7 lakh doses that have gone out pro bono, only 2 lakh are doses of India's Covaxin. The rest are doses of Serum Institute's Covishield, developed by Oxford University.

A month on, there have been few takers for Covaxin. A source within the company told India Today TV that the decision to procure the vaccine lies with individual governments. "The fact that Myanmar has given the vaccine to its forces shows that they have faith in our vaccine," he said on condition of anonymity.