Report: India has kept USD 7 billion for vaccines to all at USD 2 per shot

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration estimates an all-in cost of about $6-$7 per person in the nation of 1.3 billion, the sources said, asking not to be identified as the details are private. The money provisioned so far is for the current financial year ending March 31 and there will be no shortage of further funds for this purpose, they added.

A Finance Ministry spokesman couldn’t immediately be reached when contacted.

“I doubt that the marginal cost of a vaccine would be anything close to that number at the volumes that India will purchase. There’s one large buyer -- India -- and one large seller, potentially,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, which has offices in Washington and New Delhi. “A lot will come down to negotiations and the government has a lot more power in these situations,” he added.

Adar Poonawalla, head of the Serum Institute of India Pvt., the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, has predicted the nation would need about 800 billion rupees to procure and inoculate people living everywhere from the Himalayas to the remote Andaman & Nicobar islands. Apart from buying the treatment, transporting them from manufacturing sites would be a massive undertaking.

While a government-backed panel predicts that India is past the peak of infections and may contain the spread by February, the nation has taken a massive blow to economic growth and PM Modi has been reopening the economy. Starting this weekend, the country will be celebrating several festivals that could lead to a sharp jump in daily virus infections.