Covid-19: US vaccine sharing with India may hinge on indemnity waiver

The ‘vaccine sharing’ initiative of the US, which can see the country giving 80 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to countries round the world, might put India during a piquant position.

The Biden administration clarified that the US would ship out 25 million doses immediately.

About 75% of the 80 million doses would tend over the summer months.

Of those, between 1 and a couple of million would be made available to India.

These won't be AstraZeneca doses, which are yet to be cleared by the US drug regulator.

The rest would be gifted consistent with the US administration’s discretion.

The US has said the donations would be from Pfizer, Moderna and J&J shots which have received emergency use authorisation (EUA) within the US.

Jeff Zients, a part of the White House Covid response team, told journalists, “The AstraZeneca doses — the 60 million AstraZeneca doses — are awaiting FDA concurrence. So, the 25 million are going to be comprised the three EUA-approved authorised vaccines — some combination of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna.”

While the Indian government has granted broad authorisation for vaccines that are cleared by the US FDA, Japan, European Medicine Agency (EMA) and therefore the WHO, Pfizer and Moderna have both demanded separate indemnity waiver from the Indian government.

This essentially means to receive the US vaccine donation, India will need to grant indemnity to those two companies.

There remains a point of hesitation within the government about this.

Senior officials said the talk was centered on the very fact that if the govt granted an indemnity waiver to th US companies, all other vaccine manufacturers, particularly Indian ones, would be within their rights to invite an equivalent .

The government remains to make a decision whether it might provides a similar waiver to others.