> Edit: another reason (which I just read in an article) to order piecemeal, was apparently to keep options for other vaccines open as and when they became available. At the time there were quite a few possibilities - Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax IIRC. In hindsight this was suboptimal as Pfizer and Moderna had committed their supply elsewhere and Novavax was not completed in time.
Moderna was not granted approval in India till June and Pfizer which was the first vaccine to apply was never approved. This is wholly unconvincing and sounds like post-facto justification.
> Did they also pay in advance for all 300 million?
Yes. Not to mention the 11 billion USD that was granted to 8 companies for development.
> SII asked for that amount only in the beginning of April[1], so that's not that much of a delay.
The government did order upfront so, there was no way for SII to figure out what the demand would be. Until April, SII was exporting vaccines for considerably more than what the government was paying. The ban on vaccine exports cut of that source.
But including those under 45.
> Edit: another reason (which I just read in an article) to order piecemeal, was apparently to keep options for other vaccines open as and when they became available. At the time there were quite a few possibilities - Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax IIRC. In hindsight this was suboptimal as Pfizer and Moderna had committed their supply elsewhere and Novavax was not completed in time.
Moderna was not granted approval in India till June and Pfizer which was the first vaccine to apply was never approved. This is wholly unconvincing and sounds like post-facto justification.
> Did they also pay in advance for all 300 million?
Yes. Not to mention the 11 billion USD that was granted to 8 companies for development.
> SII asked for that amount only in the beginning of April[1], so that's not that much of a delay.
The government did order upfront so, there was no way for SII to figure out what the demand would be. Until April, SII was exporting vaccines for considerably more than what the government was paying. The ban on vaccine exports cut of that source.