Vaccine ingredient supply lines must stay open: PM Modi

The supply chains for Covid-19 vaccine raw materials must be kept open so that India can increase production and resume vaccine supplies to other countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a virtual Covid summit on Wednesday

The supply chains for Covid-19 vaccine raw materials must be kept open so that India can increase production and resume vaccine supplies to other countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a virtual Covid summit on Wednesday.

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At the same time, international travel should become easier through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates so that the world can cope with the pandemic’s economic impacts, Modi said while addressing the summit called by US President Joe Biden.

Earlier on Wednesday, before he left for the US, Modi said the visit was an opportunity to strengthen the bilateral and global strategic partnerships and consolidate ties with key partners, Japan and Australia. He will be in the US during September 22-25, and will have separate meetings with US President Joe Biden, vice president Kamala Harris, Australia’s Scott Morrison and Japan’s Yoshihide Suga, and hold talks with leading American businesspeople in Washington. He will travel to New York to address the UN General Assembly session on September 25.

“During my visit, I will review the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership with President Biden and exchange views on regional and global issues of mutual interest,” Modi said.

In his remarks at the opening of the summit convened on the margins of the UN General Assembly, Biden announced the donation of another 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to low and middle income countries, taking total US commitments to more than 1.1 billion shots.

Modi noted the pandemic has resulted in “unprecedented disruption and it is not yet over”. Biden’s initiative is timely and welcome as much of the world is yet to be vaccinated, he said.

“As newer Indian vaccines get developed, we are also ramping up production capacity of existing vaccines. As our production increases, we will be able to resume vaccine supply to others too. For this, the supply chains of raw materials must be kept open,” he said.

India is working with partners in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue to leverage the country’s manufacturing strengths to produce vaccines for the Indo-Pacific region. India and the South Africa have proposed a waiver of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for Covid-19 vaccines, diagnostics and medicines to scale up the fight against the pandemic, Modi said. “We also need to focus on addressing the pandemic’s economic effects. To that end, international travel should be made easier, through mutual recognition of vaccine certificates,” he said.

Modi recalled India’s role in helping other nations tackle the pandemic by producing cost-effective diagnostic kits, drugs, medical devices and PPE kits, and sharing medical supplies with more than 150 countries. “Earlier this year, we shared our vaccine production with 95 other countries and with UN peacekeepers. And like a family, the world also stood with India when we were going through a second wave,” he said. India is now running the world’s largest immunisation campaign, and had vaccinated 25 million people on a single day. More than 200 million Indians were fully vaccinated, and India is willing to share its digital platform CoWIN and other digital solutions freely as open source software, he said.

Biden too highlighted the US partnership with Quad members India, Japan and Australia to help produce one billion vaccine doses in India to boost global supplies by the end of 2022.

“The US is buying another half billion doses of Pfizer to donate to low and middle income countries around the world,” he said. “This is another half billion doses that will all be shipped by this time next year. And it brings our total commitment of donated vaccines to over 1.1 billion vaccines.”

He added, “Put another way, for every one shot we’ve administered to date in America, we have now committed to do three shots to the rest of the world.”

Biden announced the launching of the European Union-US partnership to expand global vaccinations, and said the US will provide an additional $370 million to support administering and delivery of vaccines worldwide. More than $380 million will be provided to GAVI to facilitate distribution of vaccines in regions with the greatest need, he said.

The summit, Biden said, was focused on “supercharging efforts” in 3 key areas: vaccinating the world by ramping up production, donations and delivery of doses, addressing the oxygen crisis in hospitals around the world and making other treatments more accessible, and building better so that global healthinfrastructure becomes more resilient.

He said US secretary of state Antony Blinken will convene a meeting of foreign ministers later this year to check collective progress, and proposed a second virtual Covid summit in the first quarter of 2022.