As COVID-19 cases across the world are on the rise, the European Union (EU) is facing a serious shortage of vaccine doses. The EU has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking India to supply 10 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India (SII) for emergency use.
The Pune-based Serum Institute is the world’s largest manufacturing centre of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. Serum was originally supposed to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine only for low and medium-income countries. But due to production glitches, the EU has requested for a purchase of 10 million doses.
Right now the EU is facing a huge challenge wherein 450 million people from the 27 nations of this Union need to be vaccinated. However, due to problems in the production of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the EU is running short of vaccines in the ongoing inoculation process.
India has already exported more than 70 million doses to about 83 countries, but last week the government decided to stop the export as the number of cases in India have also shot up.
If the EU needs to vaccinate 450 million people, India has the great challenge of vaccinating nearly one billion of its citizens. This makes it difficult for the Government of India to make any export commitments.
Britain, which is not part of the EU, is also requesting for its supply of the remaining order of the 10 million doses it had purchased.
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