Prioritisation of population groups, procurement strategies, pricing, cold-chain management and issues of logistics were some of the questions the Government of India needed to tackle for the success of the COVID-19 vaccination journey said a set of two reports – ‘COVID-19-India’s Vaccine Development Story’ and ‘India's COVID-19 Vaccination Administration Journey’ — released by Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday.
The reports have been compiled by the Institute for Competitiveness, India which is part of the global network of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness and affiliated to Harvard Business School.
Speaking on the occasion, Health Minister Dr. Mandaviya said that these reports document the massive efforts that have been undertaken by India, during the world’s largest vaccination drive.
“India’s scientific capacity demonstrated by the development of many indigenous vaccines, which have been approved by the WHO; our ability to trace, test, treat and contain the infection spread through a strong surveillance network; the solidarity displayed by our healthcare professionals, frontline workers and citizens, coupled with collaboration with States and other ministries, have made the COVID-19 vaccination drive successful,” said the Minister.
“The institute studies competition and its implications for company strategy, the competitiveness of nations, regions and cities and thus generates guidelines for businesses and those in governance and suggests solutions for socio-economic problems,’’ said Amit Kapoor, chair, Institute for Competitiveness at the release.
The report states that India’s advantageous global position as a leading vaccine manufacturer, and in contrast, a vulnerable developing nation in the face of the pandemic, made India a unique case and its journey of COVID-19 vaccine development and delivery is worth documenting.
Through both the processes of indigenous development and manufacture of vaccines through technology transfer, India was able to prepare two vaccines for its inoculation drive by the end of the year 2020 — Covaxin and Covishield, said the reports.
It added that India’s battle against the COVID-19 pandemic did not end with the successful development of the vaccines.
“An equally huge challenge was the delivery of vaccines to over 1.3 billion people of India. Ensuring fair and equitable distribution was another challenge and the prevalence of vaccine eagerness coupled with pockets of vaccine hesitancy due to the immense size and heterogeneity of the population further complicated the process,’’ it said.
As per the report, India followed two strategic choices in COVID-19 vaccine development where one of the choices was to foster indigenous vaccine development. Stating that since India possessed the capacity and expertise to develop an indigenous vaccine, the Indian Government decided to incentivise innovation in this field.
“The Drug Discovery Hackathon 2020 (DDH2020), India’s first ever national initiative for supporting drug discovery process, launched on 2nd July, 2020 was one of the initiatives in this direction. GoI’s ₹100 crores allocation from the PM-CARES fund and “Mission COVID Suraksha” gave further boost to indigenous innovators,’’ it said.
Also coming in for positive reaction was the Central government’s decision to push collaborations between Indian pharmaceutical companies and global vaccine candidates for India trials, technology transfer and mass manufacturing in India in case of global approvals and launch.
Going for technology transfer agreements, according to the report, took the pressure off of indigenous vaccine developers and helped in hedging the risks related to vaccine development.
“In addition, early-stage tie-ups gave an opportunity to test potential vaccines in the country, which helped gauge the risks early as well as gave a push to the concerned regulatory body to ease up regulatory pathways,’’ said the report.
