India emerges as the biggest purchaser of Covid-19 vaccine with 1,600 million doses

India has emerged as the biggest buyer  of confirmed vaccine doses at 1,600 million as countries are securing shots to combat the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), which has already killed 1.5 million people globally, a study by the US’ Duke University showed. India has so far registered over 9.57 million cases till now and 139,188 people have died. According to a Credit Suisse estimate, India needs about 1.7 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses to vaccinate the majority of its adult population. The European Union is in the second position with nearly 1,600 million doses. While, the United States, which continues to be the worst affected nation, has managed to purchase 1,000 million vaccine doses.

Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom have purchased less than 400 million confirmed vaccine doses till now. Duke University pointed out that there will not be enough vaccines to cover the entire global population until 2023 or 2024. The study also revealed that high-income countries held 3.8 billion confirmed vaccine doses, middle income held 829 million doses while low-income countries held over 1.7 billion doses.“Most high-income countries have been able to negotiate purchases through the investment of large amounts of public funds into research and development of Covid-19 vaccines and leveraged purchasing power to make large-scale deals across a portfolio of vaccine candidates,” it added. 

AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria on Thursday expressed hope that by the end of this month or early next month, at least one of the five vaccines being locally-tested should get emergency use authorisation from the drug regulator to be administered to the public starting with priority groups. Continuing further, he said, that it is not possible to vaccinate everyone in India in the beginning. He added that there has to be a priority list to see that who should get vaccine first. “In beginning, vaccine won’t be available in sufficient doses to give to everyone. We need a priority list to see that we vaccinate those who’ve high chances of dying due to Covid. Elderly, people with comorbidities and front line workers should be vaccinated first,” Dr Guleria said.