Vaccine Maitri pays off, US medical supplies on way to India

Medical support to India from countries like the US, France, UAE, Denmark, Singapore Israel and some EU nations has started to come in as New Delhi stood firm with the democratic world in supply of much-needed drugs and vaccine.

Updated on: Apr 26, 2021, 11:03:26 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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President Joe Biden’s tweet that the United States will stand by India as the latter stood with Washington during the first wave of Covid-19 infection is an affirmation that India’s “vaccine maitri” initiative paid off with US medical supplies already on its way.

Cargo handlers load oxygen concentrators inside a Delhi-bound Air India at John F. Kennedy International Airport in the United States on Monday (ANI)

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Since the Covid-19 pandemic started last year, India supplied hydroxychloroquine to the US and Europe with the total number of countries touching 150. India supplied 6.5 crore vaccine doses to 93 countries in Asia, Latin America and African countries apart from UK.

The American interlocutors have already told their Indian counterparts that all medical support will be given after President Biden expressed his determination to reciprocate India for the help latter extended when the US hospitals were under strain.

“It is quite evident now that Covid-19 virus will continuously hit the globe till the transmission chain comes to zero with full vaccination. Hence, all countries including India must be part of a global supply chain so that help is extended to the hit country …. we are expecting American supplies in next 48 hours,” said a former foreign secretary.

US Secretary of Defense Llyod J Austin III took to Twitter to say he has directed the department of defense to use every resource at their disposal to support US interagency efforts to provide India’s frontline healthcare workers with the materials they need.

Medical support to India from countries like the US, France, UAE, Denmark, Singapore Israel and some EU nations has started to come in as New Delhi stood firm with the democratic world in supply of much needed drugs and vaccine.

Under the ‘vaccine maitri’ initiative, India supplied much needed drugs in the form of grants as well as on commercial basis.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister of Dominica Dr Roosevelt Skerrit wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi where he said that as India stood by Dominica during its need, the island country will reciprocate by helping New Delhi in times of its unprecedented health crisis.

“As Chairman of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica, I wish to affirm that we stand united with India in her hour of need.” wrote PM Skerrit in his message to Indian PM Narendra Modi.

India’s daily count of cases of the coronavirus disease stayed above 300,000 for the fifth consecutive day, the Union ministry of health and family welfare dashboard showed on Monday morning. The country recorded more than 350,000 fresh infections in the last 24 hours for the first time, as a record 352,991 cases took the infection tally to 17,313,163, the dashboard showed.

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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