(pensive music)
- [Narrator] India is battling
the world's fastest-growing surge
of COVID-19 cases.
Hundreds of thousands of people
are testing positive each day
and likely, many more are falling ill.
Now, the country is struggling
to make strides with vaccinations.
- For months, they were exporting tens of millions
of vaccines to other countries.
Once numbers started going up,
the government essentially halted almost all exports out
of India to reserve them for domestic use.
- [Narrator] That crisis is causing ripple effects
across the world.
Here's why what is.
India has a critical role
in global vaccination efforts.
- India is not only a major player in the global economy,
it's also a major player
when it comes to global vaccines.
And many of the plans to vaccinate the developing world
were contingent upon India being able
to manufacture vaccine.
- [Narrator] The Serum Institute of India,
the world's biggest vaccine maker,
signed on to supply the shot developed by AstraZeneca
and the University of Oxford
for an initiative backed
by the World Health Organization, among others.
The goal was to supply free vaccines
to 92 low and middle-income nations.
After India largely stopped exporting
its coronavirus vaccines,
that initiative, called COVAX,
was forced to slash the number
of shots it plans to ship by the end of May.
- We're gonna have the entire world basically
on a delayed time scale for vaccination.
- [Narrator] Roughly five months into the vaccine rollout,
less than 4% of the world's population
is fully vaccinated
but doses haven't been distributed evenly among countries,
a situation that threatens the race to beat back the virus.
In recent months,
countries from Indonesia to Rwanda
have had to re-jigger their vaccine rollout,
with some countries pausing their campaigns
and others looking elsewhere,
often to China, for supply.
The Serum Institute doesn't just supply vaccines
to the developing world.
It has also filled orders to developed countries,
like the UK.
When manufacturing in India will ramp enough
to meet demand is unclear.
This is putting pressure on Western governments
to support waiving vaccine patents
and on companies to supply millions
of doses to developing countries as quickly as possible.
Those vaccinations are crucial
to countries' abilities to manage
and minimize severe cases and hospitalizations.
- Basically, every single hospital is overwhelmed.
It doesn't matter where you are,
the infections are spreading in rural India as well.
It's everywhere and it's just burning
through the population.
- I think it's very important to realize
that the situation in India can happen anywhere.
- [Narrator] With just over 2%
of India's nearly 1.4 billion people fully vaccinated,
a large percentage of the population is still vulnerable.
- Starting May 1st, everyone 18 and up,
so all adults, are eligible to get the vaccine.
That's some 900 million people.
- [Narrator] And even with exports halted,
there aren't enough doses to vaccinate everyone
who wants one.
- They went from lopsided one-way
in that there was very little demand
and quite a lot of supply
to now a ton of demand
from people who are really scared
and think that vaccinations
are the only way to end this.
The other kind of factor thrown in
that's probably an accelerant
to what would have already been a surge are the variants.
- [Narrator] A new variant emerged in India
that has some concerning mutations,
one of which could make it more contagious.
The country is also grappling
with the more transmissible variant from the UK.
- When a more contagious variant arises
in a geographic area,
it means that you have to get better at containing
because this virus is going to be less forgiving
when it comes to lapses in wearing masks,
lapses in hand washing, lapses in social distancing.
- [Narrator] Scientists are still deciphering
what threats this new variant poses
to India and to other countries.
The more any variant spreads,
the more opportunity the virus has to mutate
and create additional variants.
New variants could increase the risk for reinfection
in people who were previously infected
with other versions of the virus
and available vaccines could become less effective,
which could put a dent in global immunity.
The key to ending this cycle
is increasing vaccination rates,
especially in the most vulnerable populations.
- [Amesh] The longer this pandemic rages,
even in one part of the globe,
the longer our lives will be still not back
to our pre-pandemic status,
that the world is interconnected, people travel.
It has to be a priority
to fight this virus wherever it may be
if our goal is to return to a pre-pandemic life
and to have as minimal disruption
from this virus as possible.
(sirens ringing)