At this point, with the current situation in Bangladesh and in India, importing vaccines from China and Russia seems not only desirable, but absolutely essential.
Indeed, our overreliance on the Serum Institute of India was a mistake right from the start -- we should not be putting all our eggs in one basket, certainly not when the stakes are this high.
With Covid-19 ravaging India, and the institution backtracking on the agreement, it is hardly a surprise that the health authorities have decided to temporarily halt the administration of first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the country. Of course, one can hope that this suspension will be short-lived and soon the vaccination process will go back to normal with Russian and Chinese vaccines being allowed in -- but we cannot afford to make another wrong move.
It must be said here that the terms of agreement should never be violated. India here, is at fault: According to the agreement, the Serum Institute of India was supposed to send 5 million doses of the vaccine every month for six months. It became clear that a crisis was on the horizon when the institute failed to provide doses in line with the agreement.
At the current rate, unless we tap into other sources, by the end of May, we will run of vaccines, and there is a very long way left to go in this rollout. This should be a lesson to us.
We should now tap into all possible sources to try to replenish our vaccine supply so the process can keep going. This issue is bigger than any other political concern or business interest. Millions of lives are at stake.
