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The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, announced his diplomatic program in response to the pandemic under the title “Vaccine maitri.” The South Asian country’s head spoke for the first time on January 20 about a plan announced under the Hindu name, and since then, news of India’s generous donations has come in a roll. First Free Shipping of Covaxin Vaccine to Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, and Sychelles New Delhi, but it also helped other countries with doctors and medical devices.
According to foreign ministers, 15.6 million doses of vaccine were donated to a total of seventeen countries in the two weeks following the announcement of the program.
And The Better India portal wrote that the government helped more than 150 countries during the pandemic, which was also highlighted by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.
Looking at the map, it’s easy to see that with its vaccine diplomacy, India can easily get into China’s calluses. Beijing last year announced its Health Silk Road program, which was aimed primarily at the developing world, also aimed at uniting the fight against the epidemic. Although the term is more avoided by Chinese diplomacy due to strong Western criticism, the program has not been closed. In part, it is related to the fact that Hungary also bought five million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.
Diplomatic competition between the two emerging Asian countries is emerging in Pakistan. While Islamabad has had unclear conflicts with India for decades, it has a very close relationship with China. It is understandable, therefore, that Pakistan opted for Sinopharm formulations and did not order any active ingredients from New Delhi.
Beijing gave 500,000 free doses to its neighbor, but since 70 percent of the country of 220 million would be vaccinated by the government, they would have to receive multiples of the gift package.
According to a BBC article, despite scant political ties, Pakistan will be forced to go to India for vaccines. The director of a leading Indian pharmaceutical company in the market told the UK news portal, and Usman Ghani said that 90 percent of the vaccines used in Pakistan come from India, for example, they also buy vaccines that are administered daily. to 14 million newborns and pregnant mothers from its southern neighbor.
India’s vaccine diplomacy could enjoy a springboard, as the South Asian country has already declared itself the world’s pharmacy before the epidemic. It is where more than 50 percent of the world’s vaccine needs are produced there, and more than 80 percent of drugs for the AIDS virus, for example. With this, the pharmaceutical industry has become one of the driving forces of the Indian economy, with exports of pharmaceuticals reaching $ 15.6 billion in 2020.
The industry, which is expected to expand by another $ 100 billion by 2025, is also supported by the government, making India one of the largest manufacturing capabilities in the world.
And this will undoubtedly be a growing international demand in the fight against the coronavirus. As the European Union joint vaccine procurement project has shown, delays in drug delivery are mainly due to lack of capacity. And the South Asian country can benefit from this, both politically and economically. Bovat Biotech, the company that makes Covaxin, recently announced that it could soon produce 700 million doses a year by building on its production capacity. And financial consultancy Deloitte wrote that India could produce a total of 3.5 billion vaccines this year.
(Cover image: Health worker with Covaxin coronavirus vaccine on February 3, 2021. Photo: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR / AFP)
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