A woman walks with her daughter as schools reopened in Johannesburg, South Africa amid a nationwide coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdown in August 2020. Photo: Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo
New Delhi: India on Tuesday made its first shipment of a locally made COVID-19 shot to the WHO-backed equitable vaccine distribution network Covax.
“Fulfilling our commitment to help the world with COVID-19 vaccines, supplies of Made-in-India vaccine commence today for Africa under Covax facility,” Anurag Srivastava, spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs, said on Twitter.
WHO paved the way for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine’s global roll-out this month by approving emergency use of the product produced by the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine maker, and SK Bioscience of South Korea.
SII will also soon start producing the Novavax vaccine mainly for poor and middle-income countries.
Also read: How Does Africa Have Such Low Fatality Rates from COVID-19?
India, the world’s biggest maker of vaccines, has shipped over 17 million vaccine doses to more than two dozen countries – including around 6 million as gifts to partners such as Bangladesh and Nepal. For its own campaign, New Delhi has so far only ordered 31 million doses.
(Reuters – Reporting by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)