White House on India: We’re trying
As South Asian nation staggers under outbreak, Biden administration defends amount of aid
Washington — White House officials said Sunday that they are doing all they can to help India cope with the country’s escalating coronavirus crisis, pushing back against criticism that the United States should be moving faster on actions such as waiving patent rights on vaccines.
In interviews on several political shows Sunday, Biden administration officials emphasized the aid the U.S. has already delivered to its South Asian ally, including the first planeloads of medical supplies and supplemental oxygen to the country on Friday. The United States has also diverted raw materials for vaccines to India.
“In a crisis of this speed and ferocity, we always wish we could move faster and do more. And we’re proud of what we’ve done so far,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We are continuing to work to source additional critical materials to move them as fast as we can, both directly from the United States and also galvanizing partners around the world.”
A recent surge in coronavirus cases has sent the pandemic spiraling anew in India, which reported more than 400,000 new coronavirus cases Saturday, a new global record. People being treated for COVID-19, the illness that can be caused by the novel coronavirus, have overwhelmed hospitals there, while images of mass cremations and funeral pyres burning overnight have spread worldwide.
“We are concerned about variants. We’re concerned about spread,” Sullivan said. “We’re concerned about the loss of life, and also all of the secondary effects that emerge as this pandemic rages out of control in India.”
President Joe Biden spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week and pledged to provide supplemental oxygen, personal protective equipment and other medical supplies to the country.
Modi and other world officials have called on the United States to go a step further and waive vaccine patent protections, saying that would let other countries and companies speed up production of generics and expedite the vaccination effort worldwide.
The administration has also vowed to share up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with other countries, prompted in large part by the crisis in India. Officials made that announcement several days ago, adding assurances here that the United States does not need the AstraZeneca vaccine to continue inoculating the U.S. population.
Vaccines made by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are being administered in the United States, and public health officials say that is more than enough for all Americans. Increasingly, the administration’s biggest challenge is not obtaining vaccine doses but persuading Americans to take them.
Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Biden, said that the 60 million AstraZeneca doses the U.S. has promised to other countries have been ordered but that not all have been produced. The AstraZeneca vaccine is undergoing a safety review by the Food and Drug Administration.
“To be clear, there isn’t some huge warehouse filled with AstraZeneca vaccines that we can just release at a moment’s notice,” Dunn said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that despite the calls by Modi and others, vaccine patents were only part of the problem, and that manufacturing limits would still hinder production.
“India has its own vaccine, the Covishield vaccine,” Klain said. “Production is slow there because they don’t have the scarce raw materials to make that. We sent enough raw materials to make 20 million doses immediately. Intellectual property rights is part of the problem, but manufacturing is the biggest problem.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the United States had an obligation to share vaccines with the rest of the world faster, particularly in poorer countries.