The United States has millions of Covid-19 vaccines ready to be despatched to India, President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said ahead of his visit to New Delhi.
“We have millions of vaccines ready to go to them (India) when they (the Government of India) finish their own legal process to bring them in,” Blinken said in an interview with MSNBC. He was referring to the Covid-19 vaccine doses the US allocated for India out of the 80 million doses it had promised to donate from its own stockpile to other countries.
The US already started despatching the vaccines to several countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and others in India's neighbourhood.
India, however, has not received any Covid-19 vaccines from the US so far, because Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government could not yet take a call on the issue of indemnity.
The Biden Administration asked the Government of India to grant the US vaccine makers, like Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson, ‘indemnity’ or protection of legal liability in case any person suffer from any unforeseen and unwarranted medical complication after being inoculated with the Covid-19 jabs developed by them.
The US announced the distribution of the first tranche of its donation – consisting of 25 million doses of vaccines – on June 3. India and over 25 other countries were allocated altogether 13 million doses, six million directly and seven million through the COVAX – an initiative launched by the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance and the others to ensure equitable access to Covid-19 jabs around the world.
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Besides, India and nearly 30 other nations would receive altogether 16 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccines the US would send out in the second tranche of its donation of jabs to the foreign nations.
“India has determined that it needs further time to review legal provisions related to accepting vaccine donations. Once India works through its legal process, our donation of vaccines to India will proceed expeditiously,” a spokesperson of the American Embassy in New Delhi recently said. The US also made it clear that it was not responsible for delay in the arrival of the jabs in India.
The US Secretary of State also noted that it would make “a big difference” for the global fight against the SARS-CoV-2 virus when India would be able to restart sending out vaccines to the rest of the world after having adequate number of doses for its own inoculation programme.
“And India is the leading country when it comes to the production of vaccines,” he said, adding: “Of course, they’re focused understandably on their own internal challenges now, but when that production engine gets fully going and can distribute again to the rest of the world, that’s going to make a big difference, too.”
“So, I’ll be talking to our Indian friends about that next week,” said Blinken, indicating that he would discuss with his counterpart, S Jaishankar, the issue of restarting supply of ‘Made-in-India’ vaccines to other countries.
The Modi Government sent out 107.15 lakh doses of the Made-in-India vaccines to foreign nations as grant till April 16, in addition to the 357.92 lakh doses exported commercially and 198.628 lakh doses as contribution to the COVAX led by the WHO.
It, however, paused its “Vaccine-Maitri” initiative after the shortage of the jabs came to the fore and slowed down the inoculation programme in India.
Blinken will arrive in New Delhi on Tuesday and meet Jaishankar and the National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday. He is also likely to call on the Prime Minister.
The US Secretary of State noted that India was a critical country in the fight against Covid-19. “The Indians stood up for us in the early days when we were having great challenges, helping to provide PPE (Personal Protection Equipment), for example. We’ve now stood up for them as they have encountered wave after wave of Covid-19, including providing more than a quarter of a billion dollars of assistance to them.”