What is the dispute between India and the western nations on the distribution of the COVID vaccines?

Approving the vaccine and manufacturing is only part of the challenge. The bigger challenge is distribution and logistics management. But globally, the bigger challenge is to ensure that the rich economies don’t dominate the market for the vaccine and deprive the smaller nations with limited resources the benefits of the vaccine.

As the top 3 vaccine candidates near the launch date, the primary challenge is whether the vaccine companies can manage the numbers. It is very likely that there will not be enough vaccines even for the richest countries, leave alone the poorest nations. That is where equitable distribution is the key as this is not a localized problem.

The World Health Organization or WHO has been calling for a more equitable distribution of vaccines but the US, UK and EU want to dominate the vaccine demand for their own people first and secure supplies. Governments like in India will obviously not want to manufacture only for the other countries while denying adequate supply to India.

That is why, both India and South Africa had called for exempting WTO members from enforcing some patents and trade secrets under TRIPs. This will allow companies to produce generic versions of the Coronavirus vaccine to meet local demand. Not surprisingly, most developed countries opposed this proposal. That is the genesis of the dispute.