Washington:
The US is assisting India “significantly” in its fight against the second wave of COVID-19 by sending it material and machine components, President Joe Biden has mentioned.
So far, six air shipments funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have departed the US for India. These flights include things like overall health supplies, oxygen cylinders, N95 masks, and medicines.
“We are helping Brazil. We are helping India significantly. I spoke to Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi. What he needs most is the material and the parts to be able to have his machines that can make the vaccine work. We’re sending him that,” Joe Biden told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.
“We’re sending them oxygen. We are sending them a lot of the precursors. So we’re doing a lot for India,” he mentioned responding to a query on his help to India, Brazil, and other nations amid the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
Joe Biden mentioned by July 4, the US is going to send 10 per cent of AstraZeneca vaccines to other nations.
AstraZeneca vaccine is getting made use of about the world but has not been authorized for use in the US.
“With regard to the AstraZeneca vaccine which we had, we have sent that vaccine to Canada and to Mexico and there are other countries that we’re talking to now. Matter of fact, I talked to a head of state today. I’m not prepared to announce who else we’ll be giving the vaccine to,” the US president mentioned.”
“But we are going to by the 4th of July have sent about 10 per cent of what we have to other nations, such as some of the ones you pointed out,” he added.
At the request of the Indian government, the USAID had earlier provided some supplies to the Indian Red Cross, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference.
“These are a lot of the elements that the Indian government has expressed a essential want for. More flights are on the way, with total existence anticipated to exceed USD100 million,” Jen Psaki said.
“In terms of oxygen assistance which is a significant element of what they want suitable now, we are speaking about oxygen cylinders, so the USAID delivered around 1,500 cylinders that will stay in India and can repeatedly be refilled at neighborhood provide centers with more planeloads to come,” she mentioned.
The USAID has sent around 550 oxygen concentrators to receive oxygen from ambient air and it has also delivered massive-scale units to assistance up to 20 patients each and every of an oxygen generation unit, she added.
The press secretary told reporters that the Biden administration has directed its personal order of AstraZeneca manufacturing supplies to India, permitting India to make more than 20 million doses.
The US has also supplied one million speedy diagnostic tests and last weekend, the USAID delivered 20,000 therapy courses of the antiviral drug remdesivir to enable treat hospitalised patients, she mentioned.
A group of specialists from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is headed to India. The group will work in close coordination with India”s public overall health specialists in laboratory surveillance and epidemiology, emergency response and operations improvement, bioinformatics for genomic sequencing and modeling, Jen Psaki added.