More than a year after the first Quad summit where the leaders of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia launched an ambitious initiative to produce one billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines for distribution in the Indo-Pacific region, the project is floundering, and officials concede that it is unlikely to meet its target by 2022-end for a number of reasons.
While the original plan to produce the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the Hyderabad-based Biological E facility for the Quad Vaccine Initiative (QVI) ran into trouble over legal indemnity issues, and then over safety concerns, the other vaccine being produced at the facility, Corbevax, has yet to receive WHO Emergency Use Listing (EUL) needed for distribution.
In addition, experts say there is now an “oversupply” of vaccines in South East Asian countries and other regions of the world, bringing down the demand for vaccines. Ahead of the third Quad summit in Tokyo on May 24, officials are reviewing how best to take the initiative forward, sources said.
