Covid-19: US vaccine sharing with India may hinge on indemnity waiver – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The ‘vaccine sharing’ initiative of the US, which will see the country giving 80 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to countries around the world, might put India in a piquant position.
The Biden administration clarified that the US would ship out 25 million doses immediately.
About 75% of the 80 million doses would be given over the summer months.
Of those, between 1 and 2 million would be made available to India.
These will not be AstraZeneca doses, which are yet to be cleared by the US drug regulator.
The rest would be gifted according to the US administration’s discretion.
The US has said the donations would be from Pfizer, Moderna and J&J shots which have received emergency use authorisation (EUA) in the US.
Jeff Zients, part of the White House Covid response team, told journalists, “The AstraZeneca doses — the 60 million AstraZeneca doses — are awaiting FDA concurrence. So, the 25 million will be comprised the three EUA-approved authorised vaccines — some combination of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna.”
While the Indian government has granted broad authorisation for vaccines that have been cleared by the US FDA, Japan, European Medicine Agency (EMA) and the WHO, Pfizer and Moderna have both demanded separate indemnity waiver from the Indian government.
This essentially means that to receive the US vaccine donation, India will have to grant indemnity to these two companies.
There remains some degree of hesitation in the government about this.
Senior officials said the debate was centered on the fact that if the government granted an indemnity waiver to th US companies, all other vaccine manufacturers, particularly Indian ones, would be within their rights to ask for the same.
The government is still to decide whether it would give a similar waiver to others.