India seems to have left the tragic second wave behind, with the record of 400,000 new cases registered on 7 May and the corpses being burned in the streets. On the contagion front, the situation has improved, even if more than 100 thousand new infections continue to be counted every day.
To address the health emergency, the Asian country has ordered 300 million doses of a local vaccine against the coronavirus, the use of which has not yet been authorized. As reported by the BBC, the serum, which does not yet have a name, is produced by the Indian company Biological E and is in the third phase of clinical trials. The New Delhi government explains that the results of the first two phases are “promising”. The order, worth $ 206 million, is the first that India has signed for supplies of a vaccine that has not yet received approval for emergency use.
So far there are three serums administered to the population: the Indian Covaxin, the Covishield, the version of AstraZeneca produced in India and the Russian Sputnik. But supplies are running low, after vaccinations were opened to all adults last month. Many vaccination centers have had to close and this has attracted a lot of criticism on the ability to organize the vaccination campaign. The federal government is under pressure and trying to speed up population immunization, also in light of the fact that many states, despite the ongoing serious emergency, are preparing to loosen restrictions to give breath to the economy, which has been severely tested from closures and lockdowns.
In India, since the start of the pandemic, 340,000 official victims have been reported, but experts say the number is vastly underestimated.