Andy Mukherjee, Columnist

India’s Vaccine Nationalism Is a Global Risk

The country has approved a domestically developed jab that does not yet have critical phase three data.

January 4, 2021 at 4:41 AM UTC

Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News.

The indigenous vaccine.
Photographer: NurPhoto/NurPhoto

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Like many things in India nowadays, the science of vaccine approval has also run into the politics of chest-thumping nationalism.

Alongside authorizing Covishield, the Covid-19 protection developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca Plc and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India Ltd., the country’s drugs regulator on Sunday gave a go-ahead to an indigenous vaccine for which critical phase three trial data isn’t yet available.