The largest buyer of COVID-19 vaccines in the world is Indian sub-continent with 1.6 billion doses, says a global analysis. 1.6 million number is what some scientists say could ‘cover 800 million people, or 60 per cent of its population, and will be enough to develop herd immunity’. US-based Duke University Global Health Innovation Center reveals a data that India has purchased 500 million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine candidate, one billion from the US company Novavax and 100 million doses of the Sputnik V candidate from Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute.
Yet another report from 'The Launch and Scale Speedometer’ analysis, updated every two weeks, shows India has confirmed 1.6 billion doses of three vaccines as of 30 November while the US and the EU have purchased doses of six candidates. “Countries with manufacturing capacity, such as India and Brazil, have been successful in negotiating large advance market commitments with leading vaccine candidates as part of the manufacturing agreements,” the Duke researchers noted in their analysis.
A noted virologist Shahid Jameel said all the vaccines ‘pre-booked’ by India are manufactured by Indian companies Oxford-AstraZeneca and Novavax by Serum Institute of India (SII) in Pune and Sputnik V by Dr Reddy’s Lab in Hyderabad. "We can expect the first 250 million to be vaccinated in 2021; the remaining in the following years. The problem will not be vaccine doses, but the ability to deliver them,” Jameel explained. This 1.6 million doses are definitely enough as per experts to develop herd immunity, a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection.
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