New Delhi: Limited stocks, global urgency to inoculate the vulnerable and restricted use approvals — this is why the Modi government is not considering the roll out of Covid-19 vaccines in the private market anytime soon.
On 3 January, the country’s apex drug regulator, the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), gave conditional nod to two vaccines — Covishield and Covaxin.
Covishield is Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine being manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) and Covaxin is the indigenous vaccine being manufactured by Bharat Biotech, that was co-developed with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
While effective partnership with the private sector to increase Covid-19 testing capacity played a crucial role in curbing the outbreak, the same strategy won’t work for vaccination “at least now”, a top government official said.
“Right now, there is no plan to bring the Covid-19 vaccine into the private market,” the senior official at the health ministry said.
Elaborating further, he said the vaccine is not available in excess for doling out in the private sector “for the groups who don’t need it urgently”, he explained.
“Across the globe, the production capacity of vaccines is limited, out of which the substantial part has been procured by the national governments,” he said, adding that fortunately, India’s production capacity is much more than that of other countries.
“Whatever we are producing, we need to first serve the priority groups (of vulnerable and poor) and help other countries meet their urgent needs. We are living in the pandemic era. Hence, there are no extra supplies to fill in the private market.
“The intelligent strategy is to share vaccines first with those who need it most, whether they are in national boundaries or beyond. We should not confuse it with Covid testing strategy where involvement of the private sector proved (to be a) boon because we wanted to control the outbreak. It would be mean.”
SII’s CEO Adar Poonawalla had recently said that the Indian government has not given permission to his vaccine manufacturing company to sell its Covaxin vaccine in the private market.
“In the private market, for those who want to purchase the vaccine, the price would be Rs 1,000. But we have not received permission for this…,” he said in an interview to news agency ANI.
‘Vaccines still under restricted use’
Talking about the other reasons behind why Covid-19 vaccines won’t be available at local pharmacies just yet, the health ministry official pointed out the global stance on vaccine availability in the private sector.
“None of the other countries, for instance, the United States which has vaccine makers including Pfizer and Moderna, have given priority to a private roll-out.”
He also highlighted that “all the vaccines approved are under emergency/restricted use authorisation”.
“No vaccine, across the world, has got the marketing approval. Even remdesivir is still under EUA (emergency use authorisation) and cannot be sold at retail pharmacies.”
“Whenever we will plan to dole out for the retail market, companies have to first seek marketing approvals from the DCGI. I am not sure when it can happen,” he added.
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