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 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's 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.
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 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 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."
(Reporting by Sangmi Cha in Seoul, Rocky Swift in Tokyo, Stanley
Widianto in Jakarta, Neil Jerome Morales in Manila and James Pearson
in Hanoi; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Jane Wardell)
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