In the Second Wave, India’s coronavirus deaths have put India on the mat. On top, data integrity issues about COVID death toll made India the butt of the ridicule globally.

With more than three lakh new cases a day recently, India is still the country with the biggest surge at present in caseloads and deaths.

But it has also been the country with the biggest heart: lifting its ban on exports of the drug for malaria, when there was demand for it, sending medical teams to countries in the neighbourhood, and then for its massive Vaccine Friendship programme, under which India exported more than 66 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to 95 countries worldwide, as grants, contractual obligations and for commercial motives.

To me, it was nothing more than tokenism to look good in the diplomatic world and we failed at it. When Indian politicians would learn to hold a mirror for themselves to see their true ugly faces!!!

Vaccine manufacturers have been exporting to the needy world, but only after ensuring their needs and safety nets.

China has exported 80 million doses to about 60 countries, but only after it managed its own internal COVID-19 crisis. The European Union (EU) has exported 113.5 million doses to 43 countries, EU included. America exported & India too exported.

What were the differentiators?

We all know & as a result today India is also trying to clutch any straw coming its way by waiving all restrictions on vaccine imports that it chose to impose on one and all.

That was the last straw that broke the camel’s back when it opened the floodgate of April & May 2021 that saw people gasping for breath, dead bodies abandoned on streets, buried in loose sands and crematoriums melting due to incessant burning of dead bodies.

Such gory scenes have never been seen in India and will never be seen again- at least that is what one hopes. It was a clear man-made disaster created during election rallies and religious festivals

The importance of global trust and cooperation between nations is an unavoidable imperative to tackle future pandemics.

Vaccines are now a war chest in the arsenal of a nation and are national security assets. The decisions for its use have shifted from public health institutions to the highest levels of government.

Many countries would prefer US or EU-made vaccines over China or Russian origin vaccines if given the choice, yet they cannot access them. These countries are desperate and have jumped at the opportunity to receive Chinese vaccines.

China, again, won the hegemony war or at least is winning by vaccine diplomacy route, where world is willing to pick any straw at them as their saviour. Now it is not a question of efficacy to pick and chose, but is a desperation induced by profit motives by leveraging opportunities in crisis.

Chinese are also more willing than their western counterparts to strike licensing deals to produce vaccines in foreign countries. For example, Indonesia & UAE has become a regional hub for making Chinese vaccines and also would conduct 3rd phase trials in UAE.

China ensured its optics right by greeting the landing cargo planes with diplomats and local leaders photographed and published.

Vaccine diplomacy has provided a global foothold for China’s drug industries myriad by scandals and low levels of trust at home and abroad.

Making Sinovac and Sinopharm, the Chinese vaccines, household names in foreign countries, China may tilt these perceptions and firmly establish it in global pharmaceutical industries.

But after this initial diplomatic brinkmanship in Latin America and in BRI nations, will China be able to sustain its efforts? Sadly, it doesn’t have great track record in it. Time would tell that.

For all their diplomatic success, China has fared less well at home. China’s enormous population may stymie its own vaccination drive, and its efficacy rate is just 50.7% in recent phase-three trials conducted in Brazil, barely above the 50% threshold set by the World Health Organisation for COVID-19 vaccines.

So far China has administered only 0.2 shots per 100 people per day, compared with almost three times as many in Britain and France and five times as many in America.

But in the din of debate over vaccine and virus origin, what we are clearly blindsided is what happens next when this pandemic, after third wave, subsides by middle of 2023 globally? It is an absolutely unchartered water to make any plausible conclusions & at best can be an “educated guess”, if anything like that is there.

Many virulent strains have tendencies to mutate very fast; this COVID is one such virus strand that has mutated much faster than its genome sequences have been fully studied.

That is a big challenge globally and in absence of any proper pandemic data from LDC countries, we have no idea how many virulent strands would emerge and if any vaccine could be effective or world would need to tweak those to combat the variants? Clearly, any answer to that is again a hazardous guess.  

Once this Pandora’s Box is lidded, chances are we have unwittingly allowed the many mutants to take to take root and we do not know who, what or where they are?

We already have lurking dangers of newer variants of Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Ebola, Zica waiting in the queue to get dominant from dormant now. On top, a bacteria strand that was buried in the Arctic permafrost for 25K years has become alive and active. This is less than a week back as I write this.

I can easily see this COVID pandemic becoming an endemic by middle of 2024, where one would need to take a shot to prevent from infections as infections with newer virulent strands may manifest every year, just like for Hay Fever, Influenza etc.

Now that is where I see the real opportunities for the large US & European pharmaceutical majors.

For COVID 19 jabs, the pressures from many quarters are to make it patent free and allow licence to manufacture countries like India, which puts a strong advocacy for it.

WHO, today is controlled by China from Watchman to its Chairman- they have corrupted one and all that mattered and holds thumbscrews for most- from US Universities to Board at WHO & even UN. So, it is not WHO that would decide, but China would. US of A knows this very well and therefore has accepted this demand for patent waivers, knowing how China can capitalise once again on the sensitive-points of democracies,  US & Europe can plan ahead for endemics from pandemics.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#main_table an useful link for readers to know daily shifts in COVID related issues