Has Britain fallen victim to the Asian vaccine war?

The success story of Britain’s vaccine rollout has hit its first major obstacle: five million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be held up for a month. But how many of us knew it was India, not manufacturing plants in the UK or Europe, that was supplying a considerable amount of our vaccine needs? And does the delay show that Britain is now caught in the middle of an emerging vaccine war in Asia?

The delayed jabs are being manufactured in the Indian city of Pune (pronounced Poona). Sometimes known as the ‘Oxford of the East’, the city – already famous for the manufacture of car parts – is about to become better known as the ‘vaccine capital of the world’ as the Serum Institute ramps up production of Covishield, its licensed version of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

The privately-owned Serum Institute was founded in 1966 by a Parsi businessman, Cyrus Poonawalla. By 2020, the company was already the world’s largest producer of vaccines with a manufacturing capacity of 1.5