India starts vaccine diplomacy to ‘counter China’
INDIA has started providing millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccine to south Asian countries, government sources said, drawing praise from its neighbours and pushing back against China’s dominating presence in the region.
Shipments of AstraZeneca’s vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest producer of vaccines, began arriving in the Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Myanmar and the Seychelles are next in line to get free consignments as India uses its strength as one of the world’s largest makers of generic drugs to build friendships. “The government of India has shown goodwill by providing the vaccine in grant. This is at the people’s level, it is the public who are suffering the most from Covid-19,” said Nepal’s minister for health and population Hridayesh Tripathi. The gesture comes at a time that India’s ties with Nepal have been strained by a territorial dispute and Indian concern over China’s expanding political and economic influence in the Himalayan nation sandwiched between the Asian giants.
China, which had promised Nepal help to deal with the pandemic, is awaiting Nepali clearance for its Sinopharm shots. “We’ve asked them to submit more documents and information before we give them the approval,” said Santosh KC, spokesman for Nepal’s department of drug administration.
Bangladesh was supposed to get 110,000 doses free of charge (right) from China’s Sinovac Biotech, but Bangladesh refused to contribute towards the development cost of the vaccine leading to deadlock.
Bangladesh instead turned to India for urgent supplies and last Thursday (21) received two million
shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine as a gift from India.
“India is making the AstraZeneca vaccine which makes all the difference. It can be stored and transported at normal refrigerated temperatures and countries
like Bangladesh have that a health official said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan last Thursday (21) thanked China, its close strategic ally, for a pledge to provide some half a million doses of the vaccine free of charge by
facility,”
the end of the month.
India is considering giving away anything from 12 million to 20 million shots to its neighbours in the first wave of assistance over the next three to four weeks, one government source said.