By Sangmi Cha and Neil Jerome Morales
SEOUL/MANILA, March 30 (Reuters) - Several Asian countries
scrambled to find alternative sources for COVID-19 inoculations
on Tuesday after export restrictions by manufacturer India left
a World Health Organization-backed global vaccine sharing
programme short of supplies.
South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines are among
countries to be hit by shipment delays to vaccines they have
been promised under the COVAX programme, which was created
mainly to ensure supplies for poorer countries.
"Our planned increase in daily vaccinations will be
affected," Carlito Galvez, Philippines' vaccination chief, told
reporters.
India, the world's biggest vaccine maker, put a temporary
hold on exports of AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN)'s AZN.L vaccine being
manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII), as officials
focus on meeting rising domestic demand.
The Serum Insitute was due to deliver 90 million vaccine
doses to COVAX over March and April and, while it was not
immediately clear how many would be diverted for domestic use,
programme facilitators warned that shipment delays were
inevitable. South Korea confirmed it would only receive 432,000 doses of
the 690,000 it had been promised and delivery of those would be
delayed until around the third week of April.
"There's uncertainty over global vaccine supplies but we're
working on a plan to ensure no disruptions in the second quarter
and making efforts to secure more vaccines," Kim Ki-nam, head of
South Korea's COVID-19 vaccination task force team. Officials
said they were in talks with AstraZeneca to accelerate shipments
procured through a separate deal.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte loosened government
restrictions on private sector imports of vaccines, pleading
with companies to obtain supplies no matter the cost, as his
country battles a resurgence of the pandemic. In Vietnam, officials have similarly asked the private
sector to step in after their COVAX supplies were slashed by 40%
to 811,200 doses and shipments were pushed back by weeks.
In Indonesia, health ministry official Siti Nadia Tarmizi
told Reuters that 10.3 million doses from COVAX were likely
delayed until May.
India has not provided details on the length of its export
curb but UNICEF, a distributing partner of COVAX, said at the
weekend that deliveries are expected to resume by May.
India's decision is the latest in a series of setbacks for
the COVAX facility, relied on by 64 poorer countries, after
production glitches and a lack of funding contribution from
wealthy nations.
CHINA AND RUSSIA
China and Russia are primed to step into the breach.
"We have good diplomatic relations with China and Russia and
we are asking if we can have access to their vaccines in April,"
the Philippines' Galvez said.
Both the Philippines and Indonesia are currently relying
heavily on vaccines from China's Sinovac Biotech SVA.O to run
their inoculation drives. The Philippines and Vietnam have both
approved Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, along with more than 50
other countries, mainly developing nations. The Philippines
expects to receive its first batch of Sputnik V in April.
Chinese vaccine maker Sinopharm, meanwhile, plans to produce
its COVID-19 vaccine at a new plant in the United Arab Emirates.
The spate of export curbs is also being felt by wealthier
countries that are reliant on foreign manufacturing, including
Japan, where the national vaccine rollout has been slow due to
the limited number of Pfizer vaccines shipped from Europe.
"Some people are using vaccines for diplomacy, some people
are trying to prioritize. Some people are buying like three to
five times as many vaccines compared to their population. That's
unnecessary," Japan's vaccine minister, Taro Kono, told Reuters
on Monday in an interview.
"We really need to have the global leaders sit down and
think this is a global issue, not the domestic issue, and try to
solve this together."