The US is helping India with crucial raw materials for vaccine production, and has announced plans to release vaccine doses for other countries to use.
In India, less than 10% of the population has so far received an initial Covid vaccination, and the country is battling a major surge in cases and deaths.
What help is the US offering India?
The US says it has identified about 60 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, which could be shared with other countries as and when they became available.
The details are still being worked out, and President Biden said on Tuesday that it was being discussed with the Indian government.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is not yet authorised for use in the US.
The US administration also says it is making available “specific raw materials” needed for the manufacture of Covishield vaccines in India (made under licence from AstraZeneca).
Earlier this year, President Biden invoked the US Defense Production Act (DPA), giving US vaccine makers priority access to specialised equipment, such as pumps and filtration units.
India’s biggest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute of India, which produces Covishield, complained of shortages of specialised materials from the US, and its chief executive, Adar Poonawalla, appealed to President Joe Biden to end the restrictions.
The firm said it had faced difficulties importing cell culture media, single-use tubing and specialised chemicals from the US.
However, Mr Poonawalla appeared to suggest recently on an Indian TV channel that they’d now managed the issues with Covishield production, but were facing problems with materials for another vaccine, Covovax.
Dr Sarah Schiffling, an expert on vaccine supply chains at Liverpool’s John Moores University, says the pharmaceutical supply chain is very complex and specialised.
“Even when [global] demand is very high, new suppliers can’t spring up as quickly as they would in some other industries, or at least those new suppliers would not be trusted.”
The US has also said it will fund a “substantial expansion” of manufacturing for another Indian firm, Biological E, which is making the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The US says it will help the company ramp up production to at least one billion doses by the end of 2022.
