The Daily Star newspaper recently announced on its front page, "COVID Vaccines. One Lakh Pfizer Shots to Arrive Next Month" (May 19, 2021). This news obviously comes at a good time for Bangladesh as it struggles to find more vaccines for the nation of 160 million people. As is well-known, Bangladesh and Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd had signed a deal last year with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to procure 30 million shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, but SII halted delivery of these doses after providing only 10.2 million units, because of its high domestic demand amid severe Covid-19 infections in India.

A legitimate question to ask: Why couldn't have Bangladesh procured millions more of these life-saving jabs from other countries or in the open market to meet its growing demand? A related question is, if Bangladesh, India, South Africa and other developing nations have installed but idle pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities, what is preventing them from mass-producing vaccines created by Pfizer, Moderna, or AstraZeneca, and why do they have to wait for months to get a response from COVAX on this matter?