NEW DELHI - When Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla was in Dhaka last week to try and mend a frayed relationship with Bangladesh, one of the offers he made was that of a potential Covid-19 vaccine. Bangladesh, he said, will get priority access to a vaccine produced by India.
China has offered similar priority access to its vaccine to Pakistan and many other countries in Africa and South-east Asia in an effort to further reinforce its clout. Indian firms, however, retain the advantage of having a longer established track record as a globally trusted manufacturing partner and supplier of vaccines as well as medicines, said Dr Rory Horner, a senior lecturer at The University of Manchester's Global Development Institute.
This week, SII began phase 2 trials for AstraZeneca's Covishield vaccine in India. Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila, two Indian firms that have developed indigenous vaccines, have finished phase 1 trials. While the Indian government is yet to finalise how it intends to share a vaccine with others, Dr Bhaskar Balakrishnan, a Science Diplomacy Fellow at Delhi-based Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries, told The Straits Times that it could do so through the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme set up in 1964.
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