Thread by @samjawed65

Let’s talk about vaccines and vaccine diplomacy. Thread 👇 1/n

In Sept 2020, at the UN General Assembly, PM Modi spoke about how India’s vaccine production and delivery capacity will be used to help all humanity in fighting this crisis. 2/n

At that time, Indian manufacturer, SII, had already entered into licensing agreements for 1 billion doses each with AstraZeneca and Novavax to supply to low and middle income countries, including India. Additionally indigenous vaccines were also being developed 3/n

Our cheerleading TV channels declared Modi as a vaccine guru. He had toured manufacturing facilities and WhatsApp groups buzzed with how we are going to vaccinate the world. Nobody asked how we will vaccinate ourselves with the current capacity. 4/n

It was the time of a global scramble for vaccines. Wealthy nations had struck deals securing millions of doses from multiple sources for their citizens. While US led in absolute numbers, Canada and UK secured most number of vaccine doses per person. (Pic for Mar 2021) 5/n

At the same time, GAVI, the vaccine alliance, working to providing equitable access to vaccines to 92 low and middle income countries, announced a collaboration with SII and Gates Foundation for manufacturing and delivery of 200m doses of COVID-19 vaccines for LMICs. 6/n

The collaboration provided upfront capital to SII to help them increase manufacturing capacity so that, once a vaccine gains necessary approvals, enough doses can be produced for distribution alongside any commitment to GOI. 7/n gavi.org/news/media-roo…

India launched its vaccination program on January 16th with SII’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin. Within 3 days, a vaccine diplomacy program #VaccineMaitri was announced to help the world overcome the Covid challenge. 8/n

In the next few months, SII exported 66.4m doses to 95 countries. This included 19.9m doses to GAVI, 35.8m sold via commercial contracts and 10.7m given as grants by the Indian govt to neighboring/ poor countries. 9/n mea.gov.in/vaccine-supply…

Basically 84% of the exports were commercial deals and contractual commitments of SII to GAVI / AstraZeneca. Remaining 16% were grants by the government. The #VaccineMaitri umbrella covered all types of vaccine exports. 10/n

The EAM tweeted and announced each shipment, be it a commercial deal or a grant. Each tweet was followed by massive cheering on social media about India saving the world. 11/n

When SII sold half a million vaccines to Canada, Canadian Indian supporters of BJP put up a banner thanking PM Modi for it. Less than 5% of total doses (0.5m of 11.4m) administered in Canada at that time came from India but domestic headlines in India made a big deal of it. 12/n

We were flying high. Acc to PMO press release, PM Trudeau had said that if the world managed to conquer COVID-19, it would be significantly because of India's tremendous pharmaceutical capacity, and PM Modi's leadership in sharing it with the world. 13/n pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIf…

Such were the vaccine diplomacy ambitions that India’s UN representative proudly informed the United Nations General Assembly that India has supplied more COVID-19 vaccines globally than vaccinated its own people 14/n

Then came the devastating second wave. The run up is explained in a different thread attached below. We were caught unprepared, exposing the country to super spreader events with less than 2% of the population fully vaccinated. 15/n

So how many vaccines had we secured to vaccinate our own people? As of May 3rd, we had ordered only 260m doses from SII and 80m from Bharat Biotech. Vaccine manufacturing is a specialized process, it is not possible to ramp it up overnight, said SII in a press release 16/n

By mid May, 170m+ doses have been administered in India. But because of our large population base, it translates into only 10% of the population getting one dose and 3% fully vaccinated. 17/n

By then it was clear that we had bungled. We relied only on 2 companies, delayed placing orders, didn’t help the companies to scale up their capacity in time. We were blinded by the dream of saving humanity. For now that has been put on hold along with vaccine exports. 19/n

Facing flak over exports, the government explained that most were contractual obligations of SII. This is not how they had portrayed it earlier while taking credit for every commercial shipment of a private company. 20/n

The government is now trying to fix the vaccine supply situation by doing what it should have done months ago. Funding vaccine companies, allowing imports etc. It will get fixed eventually but precious time and lives have already been lost. 21/n

Global vaccination drive is meanwhile going on in full swing. As of May 14th, 1.2b doses have been administered in rest of the world excluding India. India provided 66m or 5.5% of these 1.2b doses. 21/n

What happens to the countries who were relying on Indian vaccines? They have to wait. On March 25, GAVI updated participants on delivery delays for vaccines from SII due to the increased demand for COVID-19 vaccines in India 22/n who.int/news/item/25-0…

The Press Release rubs it in that they had contracted SII and provided funding to increase manufacturing capacity so it could provide vaccines alongside its commitments to the Government of India. 23/n

In this fiasco, India’s reputation as a reliable supplier of vaccines takes a beating. SII is delayed in fulfilling its contractual obligations. Countries that ordered / paid for Indian vaccines are now seeing their vaccination plans delayed. 24/n

While other countries were securing vaccines, we were busy with vaccine diplomacy. There was excessive hubris and cheerleading with no basic computation of the capacity required to vaccinate our own people AND offer vaccines to the world. 25/25

A visual representation of India’s vaccine orders compared to other countries. bbc.com/news/world-571…