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With ‘Vaccine Maitri’ completing 50 days on March 11, India has now supplied around 60 million doses of Made-in-India Covid vaccines to 70 countries across the world.
India began ‘Vaccine Maitri’ with the despatch of 1,50,000 doses of Covid vaccines to Bhutan on January 20.
In a written reply to a query on ‘Vaccine Maitri’ in Lok Sabha, V Muraleedharan, Minister of State for External Affairs, said the supplies are being undertaken in three ways – grant, commercial sales by the manufacturers and through the GAVI’s COVAX facility.
External supplies are done factoring in domestic production, requirements of the national vaccination programme and requests for the Made-in-India vaccines.
India’s vaccine supply to rest of the world reached 58.53 million doses till March 11. Of this, commercial sale of the vaccine was highest at 33.96 million doses, and 24 countries opted for it.
Top buyers
Of the 24 countries, eight made commercial purchases ranging from 1 million to 7 million doses. Bangladesh and Morocco made purchases of 7 million doses each. They were followed by the UK and Brazil at 5 million and 4 million doses, respectively.
Countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Myanmar, who had received vaccines under grant mode of the Indian Government, also purchased vaccines from India.
Apart from extending the help to different countries, India has supplied 1,00,000 doses to UN health workers.
Grant
As many as 36 countries got around 8.07 million doses of the vaccine under the grant mode in the first 50 days of ‘Vaccine Maitri’.
Beginning with 20,000 doses to some smaller nations, the supply went up to a maximum of 2 million doses under the grant mode.
While 19 nations got doses ranging from 20,000 to 80,000 under this mode, 14 nations got vaccine doses ranging from 1,00,000 to 5,00,000.
Nepal (1 million), Myanmar (1.7 million) and Bangladesh (2 million) were some of first few countries to get vaccine doses under the grant mode.
COVAX
Around 16.48 million doses of Made-in-India Covid vaccines were supplied to 29 countries till March 11 under COVAX mode.
Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, which is commonly known as COVAX, coordinates international resources to enable the equitable access of Covid-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. This is a global initiative by UNICEF, GAVI (the Vaccine Alliance), World Health Organization (WHO), and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
Four nations got more than 1 million doses of vaccines under Covax. Of them, Nigeria got 3.93 million doses followed by Ethiopia at 2.18 million, Congo at 1.71 million and Kenya 1.02 million doses.
Apart from these nations, seven countries got vaccine doses up to 1,00,000, and 17 nations got doses ranging from 1,00,000 to 8,64,000.
The Minister informed the Lok Sabha that the supplies will continue in weeks and months ahead, in a phased manner, depending on production and needs of the national vaccination programme.
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