India has opened vaccinations to all adults in hopes of taming a monstrous spike in COVID-19 infections.
The president of the Public Health Foundation of India, Dr. Srinath Reddy, discusses India’s alarming uptick in COVID cases.NEW DELHI -- In hopes of taming a monstrous spike in COVID-19 infections, India opened vaccinations to all adults Saturday, launching a huge inoculation effort that was sure to tax the limits of the federal government, the country's vaccine factories and the patience of its 1.4 billion people.
So far, government vaccines have been free, and private hospitals have been permitted to sell shots at a price capped at 250 rupees, or around $3. That practice will now change: Prices for state governments and private hospitals will be determined by vaccine companies. Some states might not be able to provide vaccines for free since they are paying twice as much as the federal government for the same shot, and prices at private hospitals could rise.
In a positive development, the country on Saturday received its first batch of Sputnik V vaccines, which it is importing from Russia. Moscow has signed a deal with an Indian pharmaceutical company to distribute 125 million doses. Indian vaccine makers produce an estimated 70 million doses each month of the two approved shots — the AstraZeneca vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India and another one made by Bharat Biotech.
By comparison, the European Union paid $2.15 per dose for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The company says that price is discounted because the EU contributed to the vaccine's development. Some experts warned that conducting a massive inoculation effort now could worsen the surge in a country that is second only to the United States in its number of infections — more than 19.1 million.
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