Why India is missing its vaccine targets

Source: The Indian Express

Relevance: India’s problem of vaccine shortage needs large scale capacity building and government commitments.

Synopsis: The production capacity of vaccines has not risen as claimed by the Centre. Several other issues are leading to vaccine shortage in India.

About Vaccine Shortage:

India’s problem of vaccine shortage is not yet resolved. Currently, India produces two vaccines: Covishield by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Covaxin by Bharat Biotech (BB).

Recently, the health ministry has revised the target for July 2021 from 12 crore doses to 13.5 crore doses. But to achieve that, the vaccination rate should rise to 43.5 lakh doses per day. But there are few challenges in achieving these targets. These are,

• The supply of vaccines remains considerably lower than the demand for vaccines.
• The current rate of vaccination is not ramped up. At present, India’s vaccination rate was around 39.6 lakh doses per day.
• Poor performance of State and private players: Under the previous Vaccine policy, 75% of Vaccines would be procured by the Centre and 25% would be available for private players. But State and private players have not purchased the vaccines. Even after the new procurement policy, Private is not procuring enough.
  • So far, State governments and private hospitals directly purchased only about 4.2 crore doses
• Delaying external vaccine procurement: The procurement of other vaccines like Sputnik V, Corbevax and Zydus-Cadilla are getting delayed. For instance, Indemnity issues are holding up U.S vaccine donation.