More than 60 million doses of India-made COVID-19 vaccines have been sent to as many as 76 nations so far to meet the acute shortage of doses worldwide,  Indnia's Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Sunday.

"Until this morning, nearly 4.5 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been given to the people in this country. More than six crore doses have been sent to 76 nations," Vardhan said Monday at the Institute of Microbial Technology (CSIR-IMTECH), Chandigarh.

A detailed summary of the vaccines supplied to various countries provided by Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Ashwini Kumar Choubey in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on March 16 shows that Bangladesh has received the highest number of Made- in-India vaccines at 90 lakh (9 million) doses. The UK and Brazil are next on the list, having received five and four million Indian vaccines, respectively. Nigeria (39.24 lakh), Myanmar (37 lakh), Nepal (23.48 lakh) and Ethiopia (21.84 lakh) have also been amongst the biggest beneficiaries of India's 'Vaccine Maitri' initiative. Canada, too, figures on the list of countries that have been supplied the vaccines while Mexico and Argentina are the other two Latin American countries, apart from Brazil, to get India-made vaccines.

India is clearly rising to the COVID-19 challenge to emerge as the "pharmacy of the world" for making vaccines which are now being supplied to countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and North America as well.

Demand for Bharat Biotech vaccine too picks up

While India has until now been exporting largely the Pune-made AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, the demand for its second fully home-grown vaccine, Covaxin, manufactured by Bharat Biotech has also started picking up. This will help to bridge the huge demand gap.

Nepal has given emergency authorisation to Bharat Biotech's COVID-19 vaccine, making it the third foreign country after Brazil and Zimbabwe to include the India-made shots in its inoculation campaign against the deadly pandemic.

Brazil, the world's second worst-hit country by the pandemic next to the US, signed an agreement to buy 20 million doses of the Covaxin in February. Brazil's health ministry said in a statement that the first 8 million doses of the Bharat Biotech vaccine are expected to arrive in March.

Covaxin has proved to be 81% effective in an interim analysis of late-stage trial data on some 26,000 people and is one of the two vaccines being used in India's inoculation drive which is in full swing with the aim of covering 300 million people by August.

Bharat Biotech has supplied 5.5 million doses of its vaccine Covaxin, developed with the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research, to the inoculation campaign in India. The Indian government will be buying another 4.5 million doses for the ongoing domestic vaccination programme.

New vaccines coming soon

Amid a crippling shortage of COVID-19 vaccines, India's vaccine makers are expected to start producing Russia's Sputnik V and the US Novavax vaccines soon to augment supplies as the pandemic continues to surge.

In fact, India is now set to become one of the biggest producers of the Sputnik V vaccine outside Russia with four companies having signed agreements to produce the shots.

Bengaluru-based drugmaker Strides Pharma Science announced on Friday that its unit Stelis Biopharma has partnered with Russia's sovereign fund to make at least 200 million doses of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, making it the fourth Indian company that will be making the shots. Gland Pharma, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd and Hetero are the other Indian companies that will be producing the shots.

After having successfully manufactured the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla said on Wednesday that the company expects to launch Covovax, the Covid vaccine developed by US pharma giant Novavax, by August.

(Under an arrangement with indianarrative.com)