Quad summit likely to give big push to India-made vaccines in war on Covid-19

The first ever IndoPacific Quad summit on Friday is likely to give a major thrust to scaling up Indias efforts to provide affordable vaccines to a larger number of countries for stepping up the war against the deadly Covid19 pandemic The move comes at a time when there is an acute shortage of vaccines worldwide and the poorer countries are unable to secure supplies India has emerged as the iumliquestfrac12pharmacy of the world with the production of two affordable vaccinesAccording to a statement issued by the ministry of external affairs Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be participating along with Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison and Prime Minister of Japan Yoshihide Suga and US President Joseph R Biden in the first leaders summit of the quadrilateral framework being held virtually on 12th MarchThe leaders will discuss ongoing efforts to combat Covid19 pandemic and explore opportunities for collaboration in ensuring safe equitable and affordable vaccines in the IndoPacific region the statement said India has put up a valiant effort in gifting vaccines to its neighbouring countries to inoculate their frontline workers and also exported stocks worldwide in the ASEAN region Africa and Latin America to stem the surging Covid19 tideIndia has also been successful in neutralising Chinas coercive vaccine diplomacy by providing smaller as well as developing countries with an alternative that has no strings attached As many as 25 countries have already received Indiamade vaccines and another 49 nations are in the queue The Quad meeting is expected to announce financing agreements to support an increase in manufacturing capacity for coronavirus vaccines in India Reuters news agency cited a senior US administration official as sayingThe financing agreements will be between the United States Japan and others and focus particularly on companies and institutions in India manufacturing vaccines for American drugmakers Novavax Inc and Johnson amp Johnson the official in Washington said India contributes to more than 60 per cent of the global vaccine supply and is seen to be well positioned to play a key role in supporting largescale vaccine production to combat the global pandemicThe Serum Institute of India the largest vaccine maker in the world is manufacturing the AstraZenecaOxford Covid19 vaccine and also has a licence for producing the Novavax vaccine as well Novavax will supply the doses to highincome countries while SII will supply to the majority of the lowmiddleincome and uppermiddle income countries utilising a iumliquestfrac12tiered pricing schedule Majority of the 11 billion doses commitment to the WHOled Covax programme would come from SIIs Pune facilityAnother India pharma company Biological E Ltd is looking to contractmanufacture roughly 600 million doses of Johnson and Johnsons COVID19 vaccine annually Biological E managing director Mahima Datla said this would be in addition to our own product for which we are targeting approximately 1 billion dosesIndias inoculation drive is currently using the Oxford UniversityAstraZeneca vaccine made at Serum Institute and the indigenously developed Covaxin by Bharat Biotech with the Indian Council of Medical Research The wholly indigenous Bharat Biotech vaccine has cleared the phase 3 human trials with 81 per cent efficacy and its production on a bigger scale will come as a major boon to India as well as the rest of the developing world Several other vaccines including Russias Sputnik V Cadila Healthcares ZyCovD are also expected to be approved for use soonApart from being affordable Indian vaccines can be stored at ordinary refrigeration temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius making them more practical and easier to handle for developing countries The westernmade Pfizer and Moderna vaccines on the other hand are very expensive and have to be stored at 80 degrees Celsius which require costly coldchain infrastructure that does not exist in most countriesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever