HCQ assurance kept, India seeks US help for cutting-edge Covid-19 test equipment

India had this week eased restrictions on the export of hydroxychloroquine and paracetamol to fulfil existing orders. The relaxation was made after New Delhi received requests from nearly 20 countries including the United States and Brazil.

Updated on: Apr 8, 2020, 23:19:28 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla on Wednesday requested the Trump administration for support to get access to cutting-edge Covid-19 testing equipment. Shringla made the request in a telephone conversation with his counterpart US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen E Biegun, people familiar with the development said.

India has requested Trump administration for support to get access to cutting-edge Covid-19 testing equipment. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

Shringla’s phone call is a follow-up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s conversation with US President Donald Trump on Saturday last. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar had touched base with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on April 6.

Officials did not elaborate on the equipment that India seeks to access.

“There was an exchange of views on the current situation with respect to the spread of Sars-CoV-2 and the associated challenges,” a person aware of the development said.

“Both sides discussed ways to further enhance their cooperation to counter and control the pandemic including through the development of novel therapies and prophylactics against Covid-19,” the person said. They also spoke about ensuring availability of essential medicines, diagnostic and medical equipment, and sharing of best practices and information.

India had this week eased restrictions on the export of hydroxychloroquine and paracetamol to fulfil existing orders. The relaxation was made after New Delhi received requests from nearly 20 countries including the United States and Brazil.

India has approved the use of hydroxychloroquine as prophylaxis to protect health workers and close contacts of Covid-19 patients. A small clinical trial in China had indicated the anti-malarial drug reduced the duration and severity of cough, fever and pneumonia in patients, leading to a boost in demand for the drug

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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