As WHO delays approval for Covaxin jab, every minute is an eternity for this Indian family
70-year-old Shekhar Bhandari has been waiting patiently for months for the Indian-made COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, to get approval from the World Health Organization.
His parents, aged 91and 87, have been stuck in the US. Shekhar and his family—all based in Delhi— had gone to California via Dubai early this year to visit their relatives.
Later in July, Shekhar and his daughter came back to New Delhi, but he left his parents back in the US, as it was the time when the Delta variant was raging in India.
Now that the pandemic has ebbed considerably in India, Shekhar wants to travel to US again to get his parents back. However, he has been unable to do so.
The reason—US allows entry for only those non-citizens who have been jabbed with vaccines approved by it or the WHO.
And the only Indian made vaccine that has been approved by the WHO is ‘Covishield’— the Indian variant of AstraZeneca’s jab.
Like Shekhar, there are millions of Indians who took Covaxin and have been unable to travel as the vaccine is still not recognised in many foreign nations, including the US and the EU.
His daughter, Shraddha Bhandari, 37, says almost everyone in her family have taken the Covaxin jab.
“My father took Covaxin earlier this year when the government started inoculation drive for the senior citizens. We are a family of doctors. We sought Covaxin because it was based on tested methods and also because it was made by one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in India (Bharat Biotech) which made the polio vaccine,” Shraddha told WION.
Even as she tries to figure out how to bring their grandparents back, Shraddha says the travel visas of her grandparents are about to expire. The US travel visas expire within 6 months.
“We have been waiting since September this year for the WHO to approve Covaxin. My father has been trying hard to get my grandparents back to India. Now, we don’t know what to do. My grandparents’ visas are also about to expire,” she said.
The wait for the approval for Shekhar as well as tens of thousands of other Indians stuck at home after taking Covaxin will be longer than expected. On Wednesday, the WHO sought “additional clarifications” from the vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech regarding its COVID-19 vaccine 'Covaxin' for a final "risk-benefit assessment" before recommending the vaccine for emergency use.
The WHO said it expects to receive these clarifications from Bharat Biotech by the end of this week, i.e. by November 3.
Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and AstraZeneca and Oxford University's Covishield are the two widely used vaccines in India.
The WHO has so far approved Covid-19 vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-SK Bio/Serum Institute of India, Johnson & Johnson-Janssen, Moderna, and Sinopharm for emergency use.
