India beats China on vaccination diplomacy

India takes vaccine diplomacy equally seriously. In parliament, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar on Wednesday declared that the country’s “Vaccination Friendship” program enhances India’s status and generates great international goodwill.

The donation or export of medical supplies enables Beijing and New Delhi to burn their soft power, showcase their technological prowess, give their businesses a foothold in new markets, and boast to their local public that they are the biggest players in the world scene is. While Western nations are vaccinating their own populations, the Asian giants are struggling to make the most of the opportunity.

The leaders of Sri Lanka and Dominica personally receive deliveries of Indian vaccines at the airport, and the Mongolian prime minister has taken an Indian shot. Chinese vaccines have vaccinated the Turk, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Indonesian Joko Widodo and the president of the Seychelles. In Europe, Chinese vaccines have established a foothold in Serbia, Hungary, northern Macedonia and Montenegro.

India’s massive pharmaceutical industry accounts for about 20% of the world’s generic medicines and more than 60% of global vaccine production. A website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists 72 countries that have received approximately 60 million doses of Covid vaccines. A private firm, Serum Institute of India, with the Anglo-Swedish firm AstraZeneca and Maryland’s headquarters, Novavax, has allocated 1.1 billion doses to Covax, the World Health Organization’s effort to vaccinate the poorest countries in the world. liver.

According to official statistics, which are widely disputed by experts, Beijing has done a much better job than New Delhi in curbing the pandemic at home: Only about 5,000 Chinese citizens have died, compared to about 160,000 Indians. Independently verified figures are hard to come by, but the Chinese leader in vaccine diplomacy is much narrower – if at all. According to a recent foreign affairs paper by Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert from the Foreign Relations Council, Chinese companies have so far received about 572 million doses of orders and promised another 10 million to Covax. The Chinese Foreign Ministry says it plans to deliver free vaccinations to 69 countries and sell them to another 28 countries.

Last week, New Delhi’s partners in the Quad – a loose grouping of the US, Japan, Australia and India – joined in to turbo India’s efforts. At a virtual summit, involving the leaders of all four countries, the Quad promised to deliver at least one billion doses of vaccines, including one developed by Johnson & Johnson,

by the end of next year to the Indo-Pacific countries. The US, Japan and Australia will finance the production and delivery of the vaccines through a private Indian firm, Biological E. Australia will use its regional logistics expertise to deliver them.

It makes sense for Quad countries to put their strengths together, and the vaccination initiative should silence critics who see the group as a bit more of a talk show. The focus on Southeast Asia directly backfires on Beijing’s efforts to dominate the region. But both the new initiative and the success of New Delhi’s vaccination diplomacy offer a broader lesson for India. It is far more likely to achieve its goals by working closely with Western democracies than by pursuing a quixotic pursuit of ‘independence’.

Against the background of rising nationalism, the Modi government portrayed its vaccination effort as part of a successful quest to create an ‘independent India’. It was rushed by emergency consent of a domestic vaccine developed by an Indian drug manufacturer, Bharat Biotech, despite the fact that he had not yet completed Phase 3 trials at the time. On March 1, a nurse presented the still unproven Indian vaccine to Mr. Modes applied.

In fact, India’s competency against vaccines comes from cooperation, not independence. Take Serum Institute, the firm that gives India much of its muscle from Covid vaccine by pumping out 2.5 million doses a day of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and by collaborating with other Western companies, including Novovax. The “Made in India” vaccine Indian diplomat tout was developed by AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford and with financial assistance from the American Serum Institute took a risk by taking the manufacture of the AstraZeneca vaccine before it became clear that it would be approved by the WHO. , the United Kingdom or India. (U.S. regulators have yet to approve it.) But the risk was partially underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has promised to compensate for potential losses.

So far, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved by the WHO and widely welcomed in many countries. The international vaccination is not available through Chinese vaccines, which have been criticized by critics for poor data transparency and in some cases a low efficiency rate. When Indian manufactured Covid vaccines are welcomed around the world, it is partly because it is backed by the transparency and rigor of Western medicine. Finances by Western NGOs often contribute to their attractiveness.

There is nothing wrong with India’s ambition to develop homemade vaccines. But as the country’s own experience shows, India does its best when it’s open and cooperates – and takes its Western friends a little help.