The United States (US), after withholding the key ingredients necessary to manufacture the coronavirus vaccine to India, has now decided to send 20 million AstraZeneca vaccines from its stocks.
When this stock of vaccine will arrive in India, it will be a major boost to vaccinate people who are below the age of 45 and against the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the US has not set any timeline for the delivery of the 20 million AstraZeneca vaccine it has pledged, as reported by The Economic Times.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is currently being manufactured in India by Pune-based Serum Institute and sold under the brand name “Covishield”, and the US has a stockpile of 10 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 50 million doses of the vaccine is estimated to be manufactured over the next two months.
The US has also pledged that, in addition to the vaccines, it will also divert sufficient supplies of multipore filters which would help facilitate the production of as many as 18 million more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in India itself, and already 20,000 doses of Remdesivir is also expected to reach India from the US. But more importantly, 17 oxygen generator plants will be supplied by the US.
When the US stopped crucial supplies to India which was critical to manufacturing vaccines, there was outrage within and outside of the US. Many US-based analysts called it a strategic blunder after they saw that other countries like Russia, the UK, Singapore, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, France, and many more nations were helping India to cope with the pandemic.
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