Brazil, Nepal want India to supply COVID-19 vaccines

Brazil and Nepal have requested India to supply Covid-19 vaccines and made a diplomatic push to guarantee Indian shipment of British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. Private clinics in Brazil too have reportedly struck a preliminary deal for alternative jabs made by India’s Bharat Biotech despite a lack of public results for its late-stage trials.

Meanwhile, the Nepal government has written to the Indian government, requesting for the COVID-19 vaccine to inoculate about 20 per cent of its population, reports said.

Last week, Nepal Ambassador to India Nilamber Acharya met senior officials of Pune-based Serum Institute of India, which is producing the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. Reports suggest Nepal’s foreign minister Pradeep Gyawali is due in India later this month.

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With its death count approaching 200,000, second to the United States, Brazil now wants import of finished doses, in competition with neighbouring Chile and Argentina where inoculations are under way.

However, the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India told Reuters on Sunday that he expects Indian government to restrict export of COVID-19 vaccines. That created a flutter in Brasilia, where the health regulator, Anvisa, had granted approval on New Year’s Eve to import 2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India.

Sources told Reuters that diplomats were working to confirm that the shipment would not be affected by any export ban. Geraldo Barbosa, head of the Brazilian Association of Vaccine Clinics (ABCVAC), who will lead a delegation to India departing on Monday, said a memorandum of understanding has already been signed with Bharat Biotech.

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