India will send a limited quantity of Covid-19 vaccines to neighbouring countries for “emergency use authorisation” under the grant-in-aid programme while commercial supplies will only take place after the vaccines get market authorisation. The grant-in-aid restricted use to friendly neighbours will be rolled out soon after the Indian roll-out on January 16, people familiar with the matter said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that the external affairs ministry would coordinate supplies of the Covid-19 vaccine to foreign countries (AFP)
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it clear that the commercial supplies of Serum’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin to foreign countries should be done under the aegis of the external affairs ministry in consultation with the pharmaceutical ministry, a senior government official said. PM Modi is in touch with the health ministry over the vaccine management and is ensuring that all government departments are in sync with each other as well as the private sector.
“As of now, globally all vaccines are being sold only to national governments under emergency use authorisation, whether it is Pfizer or Moderna. The market authorisation is expected in the second quarter of the year, by which time the Phase 3 trial of all the named vaccine contenders are completed,” said a senior official.
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While the Modi government will buy 1.1 crore vials of vaccine by January 14, the shipping of “symbolic” quantities of the restricted use vaccine will be done immediately after the Indian roll-out.
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While the Modi government will buy 1.1 crore vials of vaccine by January 14, the shipping of “symbolic” quantities of the restricted use vaccine will be done immediately after the Indian roll-out.
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Bangladesh has tied up with Serum India for commercial supply of 30 million vials. Nepal is looking to procure 12 million vials from India apart from other neighbours such as Bhutan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka who have requested New Delhi for the Indian vaccines.
Officials said the decision on the amount of vaccine to be made available under the emergency use authorisation will be taken by the external affairs ministry, which had last year also coordinated supplies of Hydroxychloroquine in the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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