India-Bangladesh sign MoU on COVID-19 Vaccine

On November 5, 2020, the Government of Bangladesh signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Serum Institute of India for priority delivery of 3 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses. This COVISHIELD Vaccines was developed by AstraZeneca and University of Oxford.

Highlights

According to the agreement, initially 1.5 crore people will be vaccinated as each person requires two vaccine doses.

COVID-19 Vaccine in India

Currently there are three COVID-19 vaccines under trial in India. They are the Russian Vaccine called Sputnik V, Oxford University Vaccine called COVISHIED and the COVAXIN jointly developed by Indian Council of Medical Research and Bharat Biotech.

COVAX

India is a part of the COVAX Facility of the GAVI Alliance. The facility aims to avail COVID-19 vaccines to all countries. The main objective of the facility is to prevent vaccine nationalism. GAVI is Global Alliance for Vaccines.

What are the issues related to COVID-19 Vaccines Distribution?

The COVID-19 vaccine distribution is to be influenced by three factors namely convenience, confidence and complacency.

Convenience is the physical availability or proximity of the vaccine. According to Lancet study, wealthy nations have secured more than 2 billion doses using advance purchase agreements. This will create scarcity in developing countries like India. The COVAX of GAVI alliance aims to prevent this.

Complacency is optimism bias. Several people are of the opinion that their personal risk is low. They feel that vaccination is unnecessary to them.

The public trust is crucial whenever a new vaccine is launched.

eVIN

The Government of India has planned to store COVID-19 vaccine using the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network. The GoI is to use real time tracking through EVIN. EVIN was an indigenously developed system. The system digitises vaccines stocks. It also monitors the temperature of the cold chain and strengthens immunization supply chain system.

Month: Current Affairs - November, 2020