As a deadly second wave raged across India through April and May, the Narendra Modi government made an unprecedented move: It shifted the responsibility of procuring vaccines onto different regional governments in the country.
For decades, India’s vastly successful universal immunization program has relied on the central government procuring vaccines and distributing it to different regional authorities. When the pandemic hit, the expectation was that the country would build on that model.
But on April 21, as India recorded nearly 315,000 coronavirus cases, the Modi government announced it would only buy half the country’s requirement of vaccines. Local governments and private hospitals would have to source the remaining by themselves, within 10 days.
