Some Caribbean, Latin American nations are finally getting COVID vaccines, thanks to India
As the leader of a small Caribbean island still struggling to rebuild nearly four years after a devastating hurricane, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit never thought he would get a hold of COVID-19 vaccines swiftly. Then a call to India changed everything.
Last week, an airplane carrying two consignments of Covishield, the Indiaproduced version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, landed in the Caribbean. One was for Barbados, which would receive 100,000 doses, and the other for Dominica, which received 70,000 doses.
“I must confess that I did not imagine that the prayers of my country would be answered so swiftly,” said Skerrit, who plans to use some of the supplies to vaccinate many of his 72,000 inhabitants in Dominica and share the rest with neighboring Caribbean islands.
Dominica and Barbados are among a handful of Caribbean and Latin American countries that are benefiting from the generosity of India, a pharmaceutical giant that isn’t a traditional foreign partner in the region but has started to use its drug making capabilities to bolster its image globally.
While the COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy has been met with mixed responses in some corners of India, it is being welcomed in the Americas, where countries have been forced to turn to China, Cuba and others to cope with the pandemic in one of the world’s hardest hit regions after being shut out of the United States market.
As China and Russia sell and distribute their COVID-19 vaccines in Latin America, India’s free doses are arriving amid accusations that rich nations are hording supplies and frustration over the slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccines through a United Nations-backed alliance known as the COVAX Facility.
In the last week, Indiaproduced
vaccines have landed in several nations in the region. Flights carrying vials arrived in Antigua and Barbuda, as well as in the Dominican Republic, whose vice president Thursday announced the pending arrival of 30,000 donated doses.
This week, El Salvador and Argentina also received shipments, with their leaders taking to social media to thank the Indian government.
“Caring during COVID,” India’s External Affairs Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said on Thursday after a consignment arrived in Buenos Aires.
India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in an email that the nation plans to make a humanitarian donation of 570,000 doses of vaccines to countries in the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc, known as CARICOM, as well as Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the rollout in January, just as India was beginning its own domestic vaccination campaign. Called the “Vaccine Maitri,” or “Vaccine Friendship” initiative, it began first with the supply of free doses to some of India’s closest and poorest neighbors.
“India is deeply honored to be a long-trusted partner in meeting the healthcare needs of the global community,” Modi said as he announced the effort.
India has so far approved two coronavirus vaccines. The Serum Institute of
India, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers, has agreed to produce 1.1 billion doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
This week, the Pan American Health Organization announced that the World Health Organization had given emergency approval to both the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine and to the Serum Institute’s inoculation for use through COVAX. Countries, officials said, can expect to receive word any day on when shipments will finally start to arrive.
“The world needs all of the vaccines that it can get,”
PAHO Director Dr. Carissa Etienne said.
The India donations and the decision by Caribbean governments to share their supplies, she added, was, “A small but significant example of the very solidarity that we need for all people everywhere to have timely access to safe and effective vaccines. But this act of sharing must be multiplied several times over.”
Etienne stressed that PAHO continues to work to ensure that all countries in the region have access to COVID vaccines and equity remains a key pillar of the U.N. distribution effort. An estimated 280 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines will arrive in the Americas this year, she said, but it will take time.
“While COVAX is not the only avenue countries have to access vaccines, it is the only one working to ensure that the doses are rolled out fairly and equitably, irrespective of a country’s income” she said.
Still, the generosity of India’s “quick, decisive and magnanimous action” as
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley described it, is not lost on Caribbean governments. Mottley said she and Skerrit, the prime minister of Dominica, worked hand-in-hand to secure the vaccine, and agreed that some of the vaccines they had received would be shared with other Eastern Caribbean island nations as well as Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
“We believe that this is a special moment,” she said during a press conference. “Nobody has gone through this without seeking assistance.”
Mottley said Indian-produced drugs are not new to the people of Barbados and some of the most common medications used by the population for a plethora of ailments are made in India.
As a result, India has provided $2.2 billion worth of medicine to 27 Latin American countries, including CARICOM countries, during the pandemic.