India has approved the delivery of its own Wuhan pneumonia vaccine to Cambodia and Afghanistan received the first batch of vaccine from India today (7).
According to Reuters, in addition to Cambodia and Afghanistan, India is also planning to supply vaccines to Mongolia, the Pacific Islands and several countries in the Caribbean in an attempt to challenge the international political and economic leadership of another vaccine exporter, China.
Cambodia is a close ally of China, and India’s Modi government has granted a request from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to urgently approve 100,000 doses of the vaccine to Cambodia. China is also expected to provide one million doses of vaccines manufactured by Sinopharm to Cambodia.
The Indian government today also shipped 50,000 doses of the Astellicam vaccine to Afghanistan, the first batch of vaccines received by the war-torn country.
India has invested millions of dollars in aid in Afghanistan over the years to counter Indian rival Pakistan. Indian government sources said the vaccines will be given to Afghanistan as a donation.
As part of its “vaccine diplomacy,” India has also provided vaccines to Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Maldives to get frontline workers in those countries started.
Anurag Srivastava, spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said that so far India has reached agreements with 17 countries to export a total of 15.6 million doses of vaccines by way of donations or commercial contracts. He also said that in the next few weeks will also supply to Mongolia, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands multi-country.
India, which began vaccination only last month on the 16th, has already vaccinated as many as 3 million health workers, and the country plans to complete 300 million vaccinations by August.
According to Worldometer, India has the second highest number of confirmed cases in the world, with 11,948 confirmed cases reported yesterday and a total of 10,827,314 confirmed cases, resulting in 155,032 deaths.
Recent Comments