Quad to move forward production of 1 bn doses of Covid vaccines in India to counter China

China stepped up the supply of its vaccines to countries in the Indo-Pacific region to take advantage of the void created by the restrictions in India

With New Delhi planning to restart export of the Covid-19 vaccines, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to join his American, Australian and Japanese counterparts this week to move forward production of at least one billion doses of jabs by the Biological E Limited in India.

Modi will join President Joe Biden of the United States, Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan in Washington DC for the first in-person summit of the Quad next Friday.

The leaders of the four-nation coalition had agreed during a virtual summit on March 12 that the US Development Finance Corporation would support Biological E Limited of India to augment capacity to produce up to one billion doses of the vaccine by the end of 2022, primarily for supply to the Indo-Pacific region. They will however discuss the possibility of moving it forward during the summit, which the US President will host at the White House in Washington DC next Friday.

“In March, there was a commitment to producing a billion vaccines through the Quad, by the end of 2022. And there’ll be some announcements about moving that forward, as well as other forms of Covid-19 assistance,” a senior official of the Biden Administration told journalists in Washington DC while outlining the agenda of the forthcoming summit of the Quad.

The Quad Vaccine Initiative was aimed at countering China’s bid to use the supply of the Covid-19 jabs developed by its pharmaceutical companies to South Asian and the South East Asian nations in order to expand its geopolitical influence in the region.

The Modi Government had sent out 107.15 lakh doses of the Made-in-India vaccines to foreign nations as grant till April 22 this year, in addition to the 357.92 lakh doses exported commercially and 198.628 lakh doses contributed to the COVAX, an initiative launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) for equitable distribution of the antidote against the SARS-CoV-2 infection. It, however, had paused its “Vaccine-Maitri” initiative after the shortage of the jabs came to the fore during the brutal second Covid-19 wave in India and slowed down the inoculation programme in the country itself.

China stepped up the supply of its vaccines to countries in the region to take advantage of the void created by the restrictions imposed on export and donation of the jabs from India. The US, however, sent out a portion of its donation of surplus 80 million doses of vaccines to the Indo-Pacific region.

The Biden Administration, however, has been nudging the Modi Government to restart sending out the Covid-19 vaccines produced in India. With the inoculation programme in the country accelerating, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Monday announced government’s plan to restart exporting and donating vaccines, including through the COVAX.

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