India or Israel? Meet the other ‘vaccination country’

Meet India.

Nicknamed the ‘pharmacy of the world’, even before the pandemic, the country produced 60% of the vaccines worldwide. Now it is set to become only the United States the second largest COVID vaccine manufacturer, with the ability to produce enough doses to protect its own population and other developing countries.

“Regardless of who invents a vaccine or where it is invented, it will remain meaningless if it is not manufactured on a large scale,” India’s ambassador to Israel, Shri Sanjeev Kumar Singla, told The Jerusalem Post. “This is where India’s production strength becomes a major global asset.”

The largest single vaccine manufacturing plant in the world is in India, a private company in Pune named Serum Institute of India.

There are several global companies already affiliated with Indian pharmaceutical companies for the manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines. These include the British AstraZeneca, the Russian Sputnik V and two American companies: Johnson & Johnson and Novavax. Johnson & Johnson is also conducting a portion of its Phase III clinical trial in the country.

About one billion doses of the U.S. vaccine are expected to be produced in India to be distributed to countries in the Indo-Pacific region next year, Singla told the Post.

THE COUNTRY did not just sell millions of COVID-19 vaccines to different countries.

“We have a fundamental, civilized belief that we need to share with everyone else, especially with developing countries,” Singla said of the country, which exports more than 64 million doses of vaccines to more than 82 countries. This was more than the number of vaccines administered internally.

“This belief is contained in the Sanskrit term ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, which means that the world is one family,” he further explained. “COVID-19 just repeated it, as it showed that no country is an island, and we are not safe until everyone is safe.”

India sold about 25,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the Palestinian Authority earlier this year, saying it would supply more if asked.

About 17% to 18% of the other vaccines exported went to countries near Israel, such as Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Another 40% was distributed to countries in Africa. And about 28% went to the World Health Organization’s COVAX program, which aims to provide doses of COVID vaccines for at least 20% of the population of countries that would not otherwise be able to afford them.

India has also provided vaccines to the UN peacekeepers.

While Singla said that ‘it is still too early’ to look at vaccination in geopolitical terms, he acknowledged that ‘people do remember who came to their aid in times of need. The benevolence remains. ”

But he said ‘such benefits would be a consequence but not the primary driver’ for the country’s production and distribution efforts. In fact, India recently called on the World Trade Organization to use the provision in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to grant a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines so that it can be produced in larger volume. The request was not accepted.

IF, as mentioned, India has made efforts to vaccinate its own massive population of 1.3 billion people. According to the Indian Ministry of Health, India has so far distributed more than 90 million doses to its people at an average of 2.2 million people per day. .

The daily vaccination rate is second in the world, just below the United States. With 1.3 billion people in the country, however, the campaign is expected to take months, if not more than a year.

Two vaccines are used in India: AstraZeneca and its own locally developed vaccine known as Covaxin, which was created by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council for Medical Research and the National Institute of Virology in India.

The clinical trials of the vaccine have shown that it is 81% effective. So far, the vaccine has been approved for emergency use in Iran, Mauritius, Myanmar, Paraguay and Zimbabwe.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi administered the Indian vaccine.

India continues to suffer from the challenges of the pandemic. It is currently undergoing another coronavirus wave, with about 100,000 new cases being registered every day. The cases are in about six states, according to the ambassador, and are partly attributed to the behavior of the public. It is currently a ‘festive season’ in India and there is also an election campaign going on.

Parts of the country have already closed and there is talk of a possible national exclusion.

Although India has not completely sealed its borders, regardless of the vaccination status, everyone who arrives in the country must have taken a PCR test before boarding the plane and upon their arrival. There is also a mandatory quarantine requirement if one tests positive.

BECAUSE, because the ambassador said, India understands that “COVID is unlikely to disappear in the next year and that we may have other pandemics,” he said, adding that he is taking part in other efforts to improve the management of COVID-19.

Some of these initiatives are with Israel.

India and Israel are collaborating on the development of non-invasive sound-based, Terahertz, breath analyzer and odor diagnostic kits for COVID-19 detection. During the summer, a delegation of Israeli defense and medical personnel traveled to the country to begin the program and test the new screening packages on approximately 25,000 Indian citizens.

Singla said Israel’s defense and development board is calibrating the results. After the work was completed – and Singla did not have a timeline – he said that “it could have the potential to change the way we approach the pandemic.”

Israel and India are also investigating cooperation in the use of artificial intelligence in mapping and predicting the spatial spread of the virus.

“There is a desire to go back to our normal lives and to do that, we need a vaccine very quickly,” Singla said.

‘To the extent that we can help control [the virus]”We will be very happy,” he continued, adding that “no one is looking for developing countries in this world, so they need to take care of each other. ‘