While India is being hailed globally for alleviating the pain and grief caused by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic by supplying the world with its affordable and easy-to-store vaccines, there is a campaign being orchestrated by a section of the media to discredit the nation’s “vaccine maitri”.
In a bid to embarrass the Modi administration, certain politicians and a section of the mainstream left-liberal media are disseminating misinformation about the Indian-made vaccines supplied to various nations around the world as part of India’s vaccine diplomacy.
On Tuesday, some of the left-liberal media outlets and yesteryear politicians claimed on social media that South Africa had rejected the 1 million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses supplied by the Serum Institute of India (SII) earlier this month under a commercial deal and further said that South Africa had asked for the doses to be taken back.
A report published by Economic Times claimed that South Africa wanted to return the one million COVID-19 vaccine doses received from Serum Institute of India. The report claimed that South Africa had decided to return the vaccine a week after the country said it would put on hold the use of AstraZeneca in its vaccination program after it showed reduced protection against the South African variant of the coronavirus.
Other news outlets soon picked up the story. The report had stated that South Africa had paused the rollout of Indian-made AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine doses after preliminary trial data showed they offered minimal protection against mild to moderate illness from the country’s dominant COVID-19 variant.
The country was likely to administer Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines from Wednesday, a Reuters report said.
The Hindu too reported with similar claims that Serum Institute of India has been asked take back the one million COVID-19 vaccine doses the company had sent in early February.
The far-left propaganda website ‘The Wire’, which has a history of peddling fake news, put out a report on similar lines, saying that Indian vaccines would be sent back.
In a strange turn of events, BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy also fell prey to the same misinformation and tweeted a report by The Hindu claiming that South Africa had asked SII to take back the vaccines.
As could be expected, Pakistan too celebrated India’s supposed ‘failure’. Citing a Forbes report, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the ruling party in the terror-beholden, military-run rump state ‘hoped’ that India did not put World at risk by supplying such vaccines. Of course, Pakistan completely ignored the fact that the debt-ridden country had earlier this month secured ,via the global COVAX alliance, 7 million doses of the same India-made vaccines to protect Pakistanis from the Chinese virus.
Did South Africa ask the Serum Institute to take back the vaccines?
Responding to these media reports, the South African government has categorically refuted the news peddled by the media, saying that no such proposals have been made to the SII to take back the vaccines.
While South Africa had paused the rollout of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine doses this month after one of the trials had shown that the SII vaccine offered lesser protection against the South African COVID-19 variant, it did not ask for the India-made vaccines to be taken back.
The South African government had agreed to purchase COVID-19 vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson to combat the South African variant. The South African administration, after procuring the J&J vaccine, had decided to share the excess vaccines supplied by India to other African countries via the African Union (AU).
Speaking in the parliament, South Africa’s Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said, “I would like to clarify a few media reports that said we had returned the vaccines to India. We have not returned the AstraZeneca vaccines to India”.
Mkhize added the AstraZeneca doses that were purchased are now offered to the African Union platform, of which SA is also a member. He further said that the AU would distribute to those countries who have already expressed interest in acquiring the stock.
He stated, “I also wish to put it on record once again that the vaccines have not expired and that the expiry date of April was established through our quality control processes – a wrong impression was created that the vaccines have expired – this is simply not true”.
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