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No one in India has received a COVID-19 vaccine yet, but the country has more than one and a half billion doses on order.
Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center says most come from an American company, Novavax, whose product is now in stage 3 clinical trials. Others are made by the British company AstraZeneca and the Sputnik-V vaccine from Russia.
Injections could start sometime next month.
Japan may begin administering vaccinations in late February. Kyodo News reports more than half a billion doses are on order including 120 million each from Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca, as well as 250-million from Novavax and 50 million from Moderna.
Cooperation Made the Vaccines, But Capitalism Will Extend the Pandemic 26/12/2020
A pedestrian walks past a Christmas-themed graffiti depicting an angel, in Berlin, December 17, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch.
When nurse May Parsons administered the first injection in the world of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to ninety-year-old British grandmother Margaret Keenan, applauded by dozens of moist-eyed medical staff at University Hospital Coventry, it was as glorious and moving a moment as any humanity has ever seen.
A jaw-dropping marvel of science, economic planning, and selfless, humanist cooperation by thousands of researchers around the globe, the development of this and other vaccines hot on Pfizer’s heels has taken a mere nine months since the discovery of the disease, rather than the years or even decades such medical research and development (R&D) normally takes. They offer a glimpse of how much more an egalitarian, rationalist world could produce a
Will Low-Income Countries Have To Wait on COVID Vaccines?
Rich countries are snapping up vaccines even before they’re ready, and it could mean fewer as well as delays in vaccination for billions in less wealthy nations, according to a new study.
The global assessment of purchasing agreements shows that high-income countries, as well as a few middle-income countries flush with manufacturing capacity, have already purchased nearly 3.8 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, with options for another five billion.
“…soon, even countries that have the finances to shop for vaccines will find there is no manufacturing capacity available to fill their needs.”
In Depth: Questions Persist Over China’s Vaccine Export Deals
Freezer supplier Froilabo is the only company in France capable of storing Covid-19 vaccines, which require strict temperature conditions.
China’s experimental coronavirus vaccines are on the move. Global procurement data shows that three Chinese firms have inked deals to supply hundreds of millions of vials to the world in bilateral agreements with nations like Indonesia and Brazil.
The flashier mRNA vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are more adaptable and have produced enviable results, but keeping them cold enough to prevent their delicate strands of genetic material from falling apart in transit is a major challenge.