The horrific scenes coming in from India have vaulted that nation to the top of the single-day COVID-19 death tally, not a statistic you want to lead the world in, and this is just the official totals. (For various reasons, the actual number may be substantially higher.) Unsurprisingly, then, the country that has done more to mass produce vaccines than almost anyone else has announced an export ban through October as doses are being diverted to combat disease in India. The ban will affect, at least, Johnson & Johnson (made by Biological E), AstraZeneca's Covishield (Serum Institute and Dr. Reddy's), Novavax (Serum Institute), and Sputnik V (Dr. Reddy's). While we don't know which countries are affected here, the Reuters report makes it sound like it will be mainly south Asian nations and anybody hoping to get vaccines via COVAX, the WHO's distribution network (140 million doses were diverted from the latter). There's some hope from the US:
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday his country would export at least 20 million doses of the Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech , Moderna (MRNA.O) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) shots, on top of 60 million AstraZeneca doses he had already planned to give to other countries.
But those are drops in the bucket compared to demand. Vaccine nationalism was always going to be a problem, and anyone claiming otherwise hasn't been paying attention.
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