India Should Take the Lead on Vaccine Delivery
If it can set up an effective cold chain to distribute doses, other developing nations might also be able to find a way out of the pandemic.
Some vaccines may require subzero temperatures.
Photographer: Sanjit Das/BloombergThe pressures of the pandemic have fallen hardest on developing countries with weak governments. They’re struggling to determine who is being infected and why, and to mitigate the economic impact of lockdowns and social distancing measures. If dealing with Covid-19 is stressing those states, however, the effort required to end the pandemic may exhaust them.
Speaking to the Financial Times this week, the Indian vaccine manufacturer Adar Poonawalla — whose Serum Institute of India plans to produce a billion doses of an eventual vaccine, far in excess of any of its competitors — warned that vaccinating “everyone on this planet” poses an enormous governance challenge. He says there’s no “proper plan on paper” for distributing any successful vaccine; Serum may well provide 500 million doses to an Indian government that has no way to get them to people. And India’s infant immunization program has at least given the country some distribution capacity. The problem is worse elsewhere.