No, RBI Guv Didn’t Say Vaccine Will Be Available to All by 2022

The RBI Governor was talking about IMF’s projections and was not giving a timeline of vaccine roll out.

A tweet by public broadcaster Doordarshan News (DD News) carrying a quote attributed to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das, saying, “Vaccine would be available to all by the second half of 2022,” has gone viral.

The tweet, which has since been deleted, was posted during the Governor's unscheduled live address on 5 May 2021.

We went through his speech and found that he was misquoted by DD News. He was talking about the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) projections from January 2021 for when vaccines would be available in most countries, based on their economic classification.

CLAIM

The tweet by DD News said, "#RBI Governor @DasShaktikanta: Vaccine would be available to all by second half of 2022".

This led to social media users copy-pasting the message with some poking fun at the Governor for “delivering a health bulletin”.

The same screenshot was shared by many Facebook users, archives of which can be found here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We went through the full transcript of the address by Das and his video address that can be found on RBI’s YouTube handle.

Das was talking about IMF's projections from January 2021, where the organisation had estimated when vaccines would be available in countries, based on their economic classification.

Here's the excerpt from the speech where he talks about the IMF.

“In April 2021, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised up its global growth projection for 2021 to 6.0 percent (from 5.5 percent projected in January 2021) on the assumption that vaccines would be available in advanced economies (AEs) and some emerging market economies (EMEs) by the summer of 2021 and in most other countries by the second half of 2022.”

Shaktikanta Das, RBI Governor

The part of the video where Das is referring to the IMF’s projection can be seen from 4:38. Das was referring to the IMF's World Economic Outlook report published in January 2021.

"The baseline assumes broad vaccine availability in advanced economies and some emerging market economies in summer 2021 and across most countries by the second half of 2022—an accelerated timeline relative to expectations at the time of the previous forecast," the report said.

We went through the rest of speech delivered by Das and didn't find any mention of the vaccine availability timeline.

Evidently, the RBI Governor was misquoted by DD News, and he was not giving a timeline of vaccine roll out in India.

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