Producing 1 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses in India to boost global supply: Joe Biden

The partnership between the Quad nations — the US, India, Japan and Australia — is “on track to help produce at least 1 billion vaccine doses in India to boost the global supply by the end of 2022,” said US President Joe Biden as he spoke about measures to combat Covid-19 pandemic across the world.

Addressing the virtual Global Covid-19 Summit on Wednesday, Joe Biden said, “We’re working with partner nations, pharmaceutical companies, and other manufacturers to increase their own capacity and capability to produce and manufacture safe and highly effective vaccines in their own countries.”

“For example, our Quad partnership with India, Japan, and Australia is on track to help produce at least 1 billion vaccine doses in India to boost the global supply by the end of 2022,” Joe Biden said while addressing the summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

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Joe Biden further emphasised how vaccinating “is the ultimate solution to Covid-19”. He said, “To beat the pandemic here , we need to beat it everywhere.”

He said with the new commitments, “for every one shot we’ve administered to date in America, we have now committed to do three shots to the rest of the world.”

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Joe Biden also announced that the US is doubling its purchase of Pfizer’s Covid-19 shots to share with the world to 1 billion doses as he embraces the goal of vaccinating 70 per cent of the global population within the next year.

The US further announced to provide more than $380 million to assist in the Global Vaccine Alliance — GAVI — to further facilitate vaccine distribution in regions in the greatest — with the greatest need.

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Joe Biden also announced the launch of the EU-US vaccine partnership to work more closely together on expanding global vaccinations.

“And as we do so, we should unite around the world on a few principles: that we commit to donating, not selling — donating, not selling, doses to low- and lower-income countries, and that the donations come with no political strings attached,” Joe Biden said.

“We support COVAX as the main distributor for sharing WHO-approved vaccines; and that we fight vaccine disinformation and exercise transparency to build vital public trust in these lifesaving tools,” Joe Biden said.