While India was reeling under a devastating second wave and acute shortage of coronavirus vaccines, India was exporting vaccines to other nations. According to information available through RTI—and a copy of which is available with The Daily Guardian—6.37 crore vaccine doses were exported to 89 countries till the month of April. And, more than 19 lakh vaccines were exported in April and May, at a time when the second wave was at its peak in India.
RTI sought by Pune-based civil rights activist Prafful Sarda reveals that from 1 April to 29 May, 19.68 lakh vaccines were exported to 13 countries namely Nauru, Trinidad and Tobago, Guinea, Papua New Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Zambia, Comoros, Cameroon, Mauritania, Albania, Syria, Niger and Paraguay. These vaccines were given by grant, or on a commercial basis and under the Covax facility.
RTI reply has mentioned in passing that the vaccines were procured for the export purposes—as grant, contractual supplies and under the Covax facility—as per the authorisation from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. Till the month of May as per the official data, the Centre had given away 107.15 lakh vaccines free as “grant” to 47 countries, sold 357.92 lakh doses at commercial rates to 26 nations, and under the Covax programme sold 198.63 lakh vaccines to another 47 countries—totalling 663.70 lakh doses.
“Second wave hit all across the country in a severe way. So many people lost their lives and so many were struck by a deadly virus. There was a complete SOS situation all across the country, with shortage of medicines, beds, oxygen. If this were not bad enough, there was no formal export policy in place; they were just verbal decisions thus no documents are available with the concerned ministries. No documents were available for commercial vaccine export rates other than ‘grant’ vaccines. When asked about the details of committee formation, meetings, minutes, agenda or plan of action about vaccine import and export, there were no documents available. Barring the export data, the government has kept mum on other related information,” said Sarda.
However, to a question about future export of supplies, the Ministry of External Affairs said that in future, supplies (export) would be undertaken “keeping in view the domestic production and the requirements of the national vaccination programme”.