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Quad to launch historic Covid-19 vaccine initiative helmed by India
US President Joe Biden is on Friday hosting the summit of the Quad countries - involving the leaders of America, India, Japan and Australia - which is the first for the grouping that was founded in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami
Quad leaders will announce at their first-ever summit on Friday a “historic” initiative to significantly ramp up production of Covid-19 vaccines in India, one of the four member countries, to around 1 billion doses by 2022 for distribution in the Indo-Pacific region, Biden administration officials said on Thursday.
US President Joe Biden is hosting the virtual summit - involving the leaders of America, India, Japan and Australia - which is the first for the grouping that was founded in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
Biden will be joined virtually by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian PM Scott Morrison and Japan’s PM Yoshihide Suga. US secretary of state Antony Blinken will moderate the discussion and the meeting is expected to last 90 minutes, starting at 7pm, India time.
US officials said the American president had convened the summit. “President Biden has worked hard to bring these leaders together to make a clear statement of the importance of the Indo-Pacific region,” an official said.
The officials said, previewing the summit for reporters on background, the four members of the group will announce a task force of Covid-19 experts focused on last-mile delivery of vaccines produced through the new initiative.
The meeting of the Quad leaders will also be focused on the climate crisis and they will announce “important steps” on that front.
They will pledge themselves to the Paris Agreement and the “adaptation of resilience technology capacity building and climate finance”.
The four leaders will then announce several working groups on the climate crisis and also, significantly, on “critical and emerging technologies”, including working to set tech standards and norms and jointly developing some of the critical technologies of the future, the officials said.
Chinese telecom giant Huawei could figure in the talks in the context of progression towards 5G.
The Covid-19 vaccine initiative is the most ambitious deliverable, and the only one, for the grouping, which was revived in 2017.
“I do believe that this is a historic deliverable. It’s unprecedented, it’s complex, it’s deeply strategically significant, and it is timely,” said an administration official, adding that “it’s hard to do these things, and the fact that the Quad has rallied and engaged deeply essentially around the clock, over the course of the last few weeks to do this in a manner which allowed the president to host” the summit.
The initiative will be financed by the governments of the US and Japan - and possibly Australia, though it’s not clear yet.
They will work with the Indian government and Indian companies, which are “already able to produce and export safe and effective vaccines” to ramp up production of jabs, which the officials did not identify but said they will be those that “are authorised by the WHO or stringent regulatory authorities”.
The vaccines will be meant for distribution in Southeast Asian countries that have been hit by an “acute shortage” of jabs.
There was no immediate indication of the size of the investment, but officials said they are in talks with the US International Development Finance Corporation, which works with private sector companies in developing countries to find solutions to local issues.
The Biden administration is touting the summit as another evidence of America’s return to the world stage in its leadership position, reversing former president Donald Trump’s “America First” approach that had alienated allies.
