| > The budget is enough to cover the majority Majority, yes, but not all. > Like the Supreme Court observed, the decision to exclude those under 45 was arbitrary and irrational. I don't disagree there. > Again, SII was sitting on 50 million doses in January. Why did the government not procure them? Why did the government resort to piece-meal purchase orders? Actually the govt did commit to buy 60 million, as the link I shared mentioned. As to why it did not buy outright, I'd guess it's because it didn't need them when only FLWs were being inoculated. Maybe the storage and transportation infrastructure was also not in place, but I'm just speculating here. Edit: another reason (which I just read in an article) to order piecemeal, was apparently to keep options for other vaccines open as and when they became available. At the time there were quite a few possibilities - Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax IIRC. In hindsight this was suboptimal as Pfizer and Moderna had committed their supply elsewhere and Novavax was not completed in time. > The US on the contrary ordered 300 million vaccines at once Did they also pay in advance for all 300 million? > SII did not get 3000 crore advance for the government till end of April. SII asked for that amount only in the beginning of April[1], so that's not that much of a delay. 1. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/outstretched-sii-c... |
But including those under 45.
> Edit: another reason (which I just read in an article) to order piecemeal, was apparently to keep options for other vaccines open as and when they became available. At the time there were quite a few possibilities - Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax IIRC. In hindsight this was suboptimal as Pfizer and Moderna had committed their supply elsewhere and Novavax was not completed in time.
Moderna was not granted approval in India till June and Pfizer which was the first vaccine to apply was never approved. This is wholly unconvincing and sounds like post-facto justification.
> Did they also pay in advance for all 300 million?
Yes. Not to mention the 11 billion USD that was granted to 8 companies for development.
> SII asked for that amount only in the beginning of April[1], so that's not that much of a delay.
The government did order upfront so, there was no way for SII to figure out what the demand would be. Until April, SII was exporting vaccines for considerably more than what the government was paying. The ban on vaccine exports cut of that source.