India on Thursday waived the requirement for local testing of “well-established” foreign vaccines against the new coronavirus, while trying to accelerate the country’s immunization campaign to contain the world’s worst outbreak of the disease today.
India recorded the highest number of covid-19 deaths this month since the pandemic began last year, accounting for just over a third of the grand total.
Only about 3% of the country’s 1.3 billion inhabitants have been fully vaccinated, the lowest rate among the 10 countries with the most cases in the world.
Thursday’s decision will allow the importation of vaccines developed by Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, with which India has had unsuccessful negotiations.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has faced growing criticism for failing to get vaccines for his people, while a devastating second wave strikes the country’s vast interior.
“This is a governance failure, as India is one of the biggest vaccine producers,” wrote Kaushik Basu, a former government economic advisor, on Twitter. “Good days will come, but the lapse of the vaccine will be remembered.”
India has inoculated its people with the AstraZeneca vaccine produced locally at the Serum Institute and with Covaxin, made by the local company Bharat Biotech, and has also started using Sputnik V, from Russia.
But supplies are far short of the millions of doses that the world’s second most populous country needs.
Last month, India pledged to speed up approvals for foreign vaccines, but its insistence on local testing was one of the main reasons for the stalled discussions with Pfizer.
“The provision has now been changed to dispense with the test requirement for well-established vaccines manufactured in other countries,” the government said in a statement.
There was no immediate response from Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson to Reuters requests for comment.
The country reported 211,298 new infections on Thursday, still the biggest daily increase in the world, but almost half of the daily infections recorded earlier this month.
The total number of cases now stands at 27.37 million, while deaths are at 315,235, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
Experts believe that this figure grossly underestimates the actual number of victims, since only people with a positive test are counted, while many victims have never been tested.
