India’s vaccine diplomacy push might be impacted by confusing signals on the export of vaccines. On Monday, the Jair Bolsonaro government in
Brazil
dialled the Indian government after the chief of the
Serum Institute,
Adar Poonawala
, was quoted as saying that the Indian government would be imposing export restrictions for Covid-19 vaccines.
Brazil has one of the highest outbreaks of Covid in the world, along with the US, Russia and India. According to media reports, Brazil’s private hospitals and clinics have signed purchase agreements with both Serum Institute and
Bharat Biotech
for vaccines, to supplement their own, which are inadequate.
According to Reuters, the scramble by Brazil’s government and private sector underscored how
Latin America
’s largest nation, once an example of mass immunisation success in the developing world, has fallen behind peers in the race to inoculate against the coronavirus. Plans by Brazil’s Fiocruz Institute to import Astra Zeneca’s vaccine in bulk, filling and finishing doses locally, would only have 1 million doses ready by the second week of February, the head of the government-funded biomedical centre told Reuters last week. Amid rising criticism of its slow response and a death toll approaching 200,000, second only to the US, Brazil is now rushing to import finished doses, playing catch up to neighbouring Chile and
Argentina
where inoculations are underway. However, Poonawala told Reuters on Sunday that he expected India’s government to restrict the export of Covid vaccines