India is exploring all the options available, including the provisions under the Essential Commodities Act, Drugs and Drugs and Cosmetics Act and Disaster Management Act. The focus is to acquire adequate supply and bargain COVID shots for reasonable pricing. The country has a large-scale domestic vaccine manufacturing threshold that gives India the advantage of negotiating with the companies.
The Essential Commodities Act Section 3, gives the central government“powers to control production, supply, distribution, etc. of essential commodities” which includes vaccines for any disease. The government also has the power to ask the companies to sell “whole” or “part of the commodity”, to Central or State governments, if required covered under the provisions of the said act.
A senior official said, “Such provisions are usually not used and the preferred option is to hold talks and negotiate with manufacturing companies but in case of extraordinary situations, there are adequate provisions under the existing legislations the government can use to secure adequate supplies for its citizens before use to secure adequate supplies for its citizens before stocks are sold to other countries.”
Estimates show that globally companies can produce 2-4 billion COVID vaccine doses to be made available by the end of 2021. India accounts for a majority share in the production of the vaccine as the country has a large scale production capacity.
Pune based Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's largest manufacturer of vaccines that has the capacity to produce vaccines in great volumes, can alone produce 400-500 million doses with investments lined up. It is estimated that India can alone produce 200 million doses of COVID vaccine every month. However, imposing restrictions on local vaccine candidates can be easy as compared to those that are developed outside India like Oxford University’s candidate and Russia’s Sputnik V for which the country has to go for diplomatic negotiations.
Developed countries have already blocked their stock with the producing firms, as the case of COVID keeps surging worldwide. There are international agencies and pacts also are securing their stocks.
Also Read: Covid-19 updates: With 903 deaths, India’s tally crosses 6.6 million in the last 24 hours
In such a situation, India will also have to claim its position as a key global manufacturing partner. Irrespective of which vaccine and where it is manufactured gets approval first.
The government is planning to cap the price of the vaccine in public interest in a situation of public health emergency under the Drug Price Control Order.