As U.S. partners and allies are forced to use “substandard and ineffective” Chinese and Russian vaccines, a group of prominent U.S. lawmakers has written to President Joe Biden to secure global supply and distribution of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) ) vaccine. Bipartisan members of the U.S. Congress are urging Biden to use Corbevax, an India-U.S. partnership, in the global fight against Covid-19.
Lawmakers praised India’s efforts to deliver a coronavirus vaccine to low-income countries, urging the president to work with India and lead the way in vaccine delivery. This is apparently the result of the efforts of India’s ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who has organised various outreach programmes. In these plans, Indian diplomats have been highlighting the strong healthcare partnership between India and the US and the potential of India-US cooperation to provide affordable vaccines/drugs, including to developing countries, especially Africa and Latin America.
The move is seen as a blow back to China’s vaccine diplomacy, under which Long has pledged to donate 600 million doses of Sinovac and other vaccines to many poor and developing countries in Africa and other parts of the world. Chinese President Xi Jinping made the pledge last November after the Omicron outbreak was discovered in Africa.
“We have seen that with the emergence of Delta and Omicron, Covid-19 variants will continue to threaten our own domestic health security and full economic recovery. While we recognize the existing Covid-19 vaccine by governments around the world efforts, but the global supply is seriously insufficient to meet urgent and urgent demands,” the lawmakers said in a letter written Tuesday.
They further said: “Our partners and allies are forced to use ineffective and substandard vaccines from China and Russia, adversaries seeking to exploit the pandemic for economic and political gain.”
Corbevax is a two-dose protein subunit vaccine that is the result of a collaboration between India and the United States. It is unpatented, affordable and requires less logistics, including refrigeration; the vaccine has been called a “game changer” by U.S. health experts in the global fight against the pandemic. Corbevax received emergency use authorization in India on December 28, 2021, after a large clinical trial in the United States found the vaccine to be safe, well-tolerated and more than 90 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infections.
The letter was spearheaded by Senator John Cornyn, Co-Chair of the Senate India Caucus; Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chair of the Technology Committee; Congressman Michael McCall, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Kim Castro, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Development and International Organizations, and Congressman Mark Vesey, member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Complete News Source : Hindustan Times
